


Egbert of Earth E

by LastNameATree



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alpha Timeline (Homestuck), Alternate Universe - Alternian Invasion, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Blood and Gore, Existential Crisis, Implied Sexual Content, Multi, Narrative Manipulation, Substance Abuse, actually more like alpha timeline adjacent
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-23
Updated: 2020-04-03
Packaged: 2020-10-26 21:21:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 24
Words: 33,851
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20748956
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LastNameATree/pseuds/LastNameATree
Summary: Follow along an Egbert who never opened the Pandora's box of Sburb, and instead lived his life as normally as one possibly could… until his life came crashing down. See to our intrepid protagonist as he faces the difficulties of existential crises and an impending Alternian invasion! Find our convoluted heroes searching for answers about their timeline and choices made during 33 years of life under an Earth of alien intrigue.Author's note:I'll be adding more character tags as they come up in later chapters.





	1. The cosmic abyss

**Author's Note:**

> “I don’t know how this story concept turned into a convulsed tirade of a deluge of metaphysical analyses. I am but another team of researchers, giving light to new dynamics, new frontiers of exploration that may, in some way or another, be essential in the main canon of Homestuck.
> 
> Why would another failed Session be so meticulously crafted and self-canonized otherwise? Why would I, Rose, have become, by choice or necessity, the arbiter of yet another instinctual perversion of words and meaning?
> 
> How does a text so absurd in meaning translate into Homestuck-driven prose of self-actualization?”
> 
> Hell if I know: come and find out.

Disgruntled and confronting the tumbling bowels from last night’s events, John Egbert sat uninterrupted and frustrated from decisions he had now come to regret. The bathroom was quiet and unforgiving. The hard tiles pressed into John's bare feet as a reminder of his stiff muscles and prickling skin. Through the privacy of this most intimate of routines, his frustration crept way beyond the struggles of the body, into the metaphysical state of John's own thoughts, wherein a battle of three conjoined dilemmas crept over their host's attention.

The first, conveniently the more physical one, was settled nearby the active region of his lower abdomen. It told a story of many, oh, far too many drinks of disreputable content that, for the time being, John had decidedly titled 'not his proudest moment'. The heaviest burden centered in his stomach – hissing and churning with the emptiness of refused substances accompanied by the rest of the body which shared sympathies of a similar rebellion.

The second, a bit more abstract but nevertheless weighing a much heavier loss than that of the continuous loss of all of John's insides was his missing wallet, replaced with striking nausea sewn into his own temples. The wallet, a stiff brown leather square of surprising volume was the last remnant of his father John rightfully possessed. The last boon he gained from the man whose tests, tribulations and cryptic bouts of child-rearing John found now sadly missing from his adult life. 

The third venture traversing John’s vapid brain-scape was notably the real mastermind behind his frustration. It took a definitive leading role in his deliberations and was the circumstance of John's memory having vanished sometime between noon and evening the day prior. Nothing of it, nor wind nor breath, passed through him without as much a word of what had happened, and what was to come.

There was a reason, however void of memory, for him being stuck on the toilet seat for more than what was necessary, but probably less than what was safe. The divorce between his flesh and mind was a freshly-inked contract. It would not come undone without a long and strenuous legal consensus.

John sat on the toilet well into the hours of noon. He clasped for a wallet that was not there and struggled to keep a leaden head up which unfortunately was there. It reminded him of the fact constantly. His bathrobe hid no pockets, there was nothing else in which it might have hidden. It was as if all of his assets had embedded inside underneath his eyelids and were now weighing a heavier price of responsibility than any wallet ever could.

John had lost all recollection of when and how he first got here. It was a coin toss of which of his many orifices had first grazed with the unfortunate bowl.

Nevertheless, the state of yesterday's blackout was not a cry of panic, but more of a reason for John to investigate his last night's movements further.

With a newfound sense of determination, John finally plopped out of his seat and trudged to the sink, tripping on the seam of his robe in the process. Against his better judgment, John settled his eyes on the image before him, and through the misty haze of weary eyes and fogged mirrors alike, he saw the reflection of a man struggling to keep his face from falling out of what would be considered decent. Eyes – red. Bags – present and blue. But the most alarming part of his reflection now revealed, ruffled as it was, was the shade of purple streaked in his hair. John’s face had become more police siren than human.

Displeased with what he saw in the mirror, John turned his attention to the sink. He twisted the metal faucet knob open.

The water was cold but felt comfortably numbing. His face went low and two wet hands slid across it from forehead to chin. He had grown a slight stubble, and his mustache felt wet and ruffled. John felt sharp creases where his skin had pressed into the porcelain. They were, for the most part, pains he could award himself not to focus on. John soaked his lips and hair in the refreshing liquid before swallowing from cupped hands. His wetted throat and its dried-up mucus mixing together with the water felt satisfying and relieving.

John's bare belly gave out, leaned and pressed against the edge of the sink, hands covering both sides of the oval-shaped convex. He began heaving from the duress of these activities, as his lungs pumped in and out in an attempt to catch up from his slow meander from toilet to sink. After some serious breathing exercises, John steadied his face back parallel to the mirror with a grimace the sight of which he wanted no part of. Pushing himself back up, John turned and moved to the door with newfound patience for the lag afflicting his body. Situations like these appeared more common as of late.

This was not John’s home.

Nor was it the house of anyone John knew, which, to his surprise, did not explain why the toilet and himself were so well acquainted. He could not think of a better place to be right now than stuck in his well-maintained and amicably preserved childhood bedroom.

The image through the now opened door appeared to be a small bedroom that seemed to have no personality attached to it. The walls were gray and cracking with an inordinate amount of mold, while the floor was a fake wooden linoleum. It bulged in places where moisture had leaked and deformed its level.

The noon sun was leaning in from a closed two-pane window that covered the right-side wall. Instead of a windowpane, the glass was sporting a rusted heater underneath which did nothing to mend John's shivers.

On the opposite side, on the leftmost wall, a door was set in frame, painted white and seemingly installed later than the rest of the interior. It was slightly creaked open, and John saw a carpeted hallway with similar doors lining the other end.

Prominently, respectably to the shabby look of the place, on the mattress of a metal bed frame laid a handsome man with a shaggy tuft of hair framing his long and narrow face. His legs laid crossed and torso down with arms bent back as a headrest. The position did not look comfortable by any means.

The man, though not level to where John had arrived, looked entertained. His eyes were fixed to John's with head bent just a little bit off-angle.

"LoOk At My FiErCe MoThErFuCkEr." his voice surprisingly jovial and excessive, gruff to the point of a constant pre-cough sent waves of pliable warmth through John’s ears.


	2. Prophetic indignations of the universal kind

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Egbert finds himself in a room with a man he has never met. He can't help but feel a sense of alarming security and confusion.

Look at my fierce motherfucker?

No memory of who this man was, yet his voice seemed empathetic with a sense of mellow understanding and appreciation. Unlike anything before this moment, John’s first instinct was to wrap himself up underneath this man and wisp off into his long arms to a world in which no sound apart from the placated voice returned into echoes of constant affirmation. His pain would resign as if by some miracle the man’s set tonality was birthed out of an alternative type of medicine for a night of heavy substance abuse.

Something about those first five words told John that everything he heard was honest to god true. He was a fierce motherfucker and to that, his chest puffed proudly – if only a little bit consciously as if a compliment that bore no truth still warmed one’s heart because it originated from a space of total trust and love. Looking at him, seeing John in his weakest and most destitute state did no part in changing the fact that this appreciation came out willingly and matter-of-factly.

It was a trance hard to come out of. In truth, John didn’t want to come out of it – he was lulled by it, hazed and mystified. This angel-like voice, he intoned in his head, made him more content than he ever dreamed to be.

But, under some semblance of societal instinct, he set himself to treat the man as if he were a stranger. Rightfully, he was. A stranger who all but belonged in this room - that in itself was obvious - but had no affiliation with John and his current predilections. 

The man lay supine, staring wistfully at John while rearranging his body to contort toward the full spectacle before him. His fanged teeth made a grotesque grin, sharp gawks escaping the man’s throat as he spoke: "EgBeRt ThE pRoPhEtIcAlLy DeCeAsEd BeFoRe My VeRy FuCkInG eYeS.” He feigned divinely, “if It WeRe Up To Me, My BrOtHeR, ThE mErE cHaLk FuCkInG oUtLiNe oF yOuR pHySiOgNoMy.." he fingered a square frame onto John’s portrait, “OuGhTta Be EmBlAzOnEd On EvErY dEcK tIgHt EnOuGh To SeRvE sOmE FrEsH fUcKiNg LeMoNaDe.”

"Who..." John took a while to compose himself.

He was blushing but didn’t really take it to mean anything other than the absurd conditions this day had provided.

"No, why is my hair purple?” he decidedly took a more solipsistic look unto his conditions. He didn’t mean to involve this man in his own problems but they were problems that struck out as oddly subsisting of a night the rough lad might have some insight on. 

"My DuDe I hAtE tO tEaR iT oFf FrOm YoU sO rOuGh AnD bAnDaGe LiKe BuT i ThInK iT's MoRe Of An AbOuRgInE." The man said matter-of-factly. John would remember to liquefy the intrusive color back into the bathroom sink, along with the rest of this exchange.

The other man lifted his head to set his arms free and pushed himself up with one belabored motion. He took his crossed legs apart and stood up facing John, notably about a head taller in height, even while still slouching. The man's voice returned with a similarly calming attitude.

“I aIn’T oNe To SpOoN wOrDs Up In A bRoThEr’S InTaKe ChUte, BuT tHe DuDe WiLlS ThAt I sPeAk FoR oNe RiDiNg ThE gIvInGs Of ThE fUuCkInG cOsMiC aBySs.” He looked straight down into John’s eyes and for a split second there glinted a speckled shade of crimson, which would explain the confusing dialectic John could not rightfully piece together. He was obviously high out of his mind.

The man piled a consolatory look unto the shabby robe John was sporting. “FoR wHo ElSe tO gUiDe ThE mAn ThAn HiS nIgHtLy BeNeFaCtOr.” he said, bowing proudly.

“What abyss man,” John squealed frustrated, “I’m just trying to figure out what happened last night.”

Before John could fully take in the man’s prophetic dialogue, the taller individual took it to himself to straighten a crooked bit on the collar of John's bathrobe. He blushed again, not knowing what exactly to ask but feeling a gesture of discomfort at the familiarity the man had with his personal space.

"Hey!" John slapped away the gesture. "I'm fine, leave it!"

He took charge of his own clothing and the two men stood in a stalemate. John's eyes narrowed, he felt a tinge of embarrassment. They had acquainted the night before, but John had no memory of the extent.


	3. Old dates and relative time abstractions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John has a revelation about his past; emotions range high.

John Egbert had enough of this. He looked away and wrapped the robe tightly around his waist. It was better to forget it ever happened. There was no reason why John would have to stay here any longer. He was obviously not going to get a solid answer from the man. It was all games to him. Frankly, John felt that this might all be an elaborate prank. In bad taste, if so, but nevertheless – too absurd to be treated with respect. That he was sure of. He looked at the door towards the white painted hallway.

For one single second, John’s pupils dilated. His mind jolted like it had hiccuped. He was worried, his nausea had returned, he was going to be sick again. Should he run back towards the bathroom or should he bolt out of the room, as far away before he was stuck facing the man and his flirtatious theatrics for the second, probably third time today.

But he wasn’t sure where to turn. John was stuck, as much as he didn’t want to admit it. There was a man standing in an empty room. He looked at him, quizzically. He didn’t know who this man was. John didn’t even think to ask for his name. He could put him out of his mind just as easily as he had entered. He could leave before it was too late. He had the power to. He had survived worse and with even less clothes. There was no doubt about it. Another bender turned sour. Another question he didn’t want to answer.

There were many questions like that. John sealed them in a vault he thought was infinite in volume. He didn’t have a name for it. He didn’t need to. Frankly, the mere creation of it was a paradox in itself. It was meant to not exist. It was built just this moment, and through the cryptic void of John’s unconscious, it tied that which didn’t exist in to itself. By revealing its reality – its realness - one after an other the questions the vault had once housed, had made into being, expanded and broke free. They were, in a sense – rebirthed. They soon grew not only in size but also influence. For that brief second, John's mind had shifted his reality in on itself.

This wasn’t just another night out in town. It wasn’t an elaborate way to exercise his own independence. His own little secret that made up for the restless nights of work and responsibility.

No, John had a choice to make. One he could only remember making once before in his life. When he was 13, when life, even his name, was so malleable a construct that it could sway to the whims outside of his own reach. He felt it wash through him like a current, flooding his brain, seeping out of his eyes, trudging towards an essence that he himself could no longer recognize.

John cried. He didn’t know why. He didn’t care. He cried so hard that he hadn’t noticed his knees falling on the cold floor. There were just so many questions. Questions he couldn’t begin to answer. Thoughts he couldn’t begin to comprehend.

As the man standing before him came down to John’s eyes, through a blind vision obstructed even more by the tears pouring through them, John saw his father. He didn’t speak, and none of what was transpiring seemed to affect him. He took John’s hand and smiled with those bright and perfect teeth. Like gravestones in an army cemetery.

They stared at each other intently, and for a brief moment, John Egbert was 21 again.

His father was laying before him. The sound of his heart beat ticked off in the monitor. John held out his hand and his father’s sure grip didn’t wain nor relax even for a second. Even during his last moments, he held strong to his son. Neither of them spoke. Words weren’t necessary – he knew. They both knew that at that moment, there was no way to give words to a life that birthed such a strong bond between father and son. It was impossible to describe it, just as there was no way to describe the emotion he felt at that time. Was it love? Grief? A mix between deep loss and inalienable pride? John felt all of it and none.

His father pressed something into John’s hand. It was a heavy set brown leather wallet. It felt old pressing against his skin but also well taken care of. Like all of the moisture and sweat from years of use had refined it. It was, in it’s essence, a wallet well fit for a gentleman.

He held it now, in the present. The man’s hand retreated, and pulled back to rest on John’s shoulder.

“hEy, MoThErFuCkEr,” he said. His voice was sincere, but ripe with that jovial apathy that fit well with his way of speaking, “DoN't YoU uP aNd FoRgEt YoUr ShIt, NoW.”

“What’s your name?” John sniffled out.

He had made his choice. Whether he liked it or not, something that had taken years to build had now cracked with a single question. John felt empty. His life felt empty. Everything after April 13, 2009 felt meaningless. It was as if all of John’s thoughts were a tissue of dead skin, hiding under it something new. No, it wasn’t new. It was something similar to what he once had. It was...

“GaMzEe MaKaRa.” The man interrupted: “NoW dOn'T yOu Go Up AnD wEaR iT oUt.” He winked.

John said nothing. Instead, he managed to let out a sad and pathetic laugh. It felt more like a sigh. As if John had held his breath for all this time, and finally, after 20 years, he let it out.

“Hi Gamzee, I’m John.”


	4. The numbers, what do they mean?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John follows his new acquaintance, people are met - more confusion ensues.

John’s bare feet grazed on the carpeted hallway outside of the hostel room. Before him, the thin tall man calling himself Gamzee Makara, slouched, lead him through a series of corridors, turns and stairs. John didn’t try to memorize the route. It was not likely that he would be coming back soon.

Gamzee was an alright fellow. John’s first gut instinct had proved right this time, and every which way he put it, having Makara guide him through the rest of his amnesiac journey was a nice change of pace. He would come to conclusions about the extent of their relationship at a later time, whenever he felt less vulnerable, and a bit more dressed.

While lazily observing the back of Gamzee’s head, John was deep in thought about the place they had booked for the night. Gamzee had locked the door and lead him out soon after their tense moment of existentialism. The two had both decided that leaving together might be more favorable than John’s initial plan to take for the exit and abscond through the nearest opening on the 4th-floor complex. It was an alright plan, John thought, even if it hadn’t beat the fantastical adrenaline-pumping experience of trying to trapeze through the fire-escape ladder.

His thoughts ranged from the occasional moments of clarity during his nightly outing to that of the precarious place it had left him in. It was a somewhat calmer topic than the degradation of John’s reality, and he could put some pieces together before figuring out the strange revelation he had had when crying on the bedroom floor.

This was no ordinary run-of-the-mill hostel. There were too many rooms to count, and an overall sense of masked identity that hid the shabby rooms from the otherwise clean and ornate looking hallway interior. John could afford slightly better rooms for a night in town, but it was probably Gamzee who had taken charge of the booking process. He held the key, after all.

John would have outright assumed that the other man had paid for it and brought him here while John was too slurred to speak, were it not for one curious fact John couldn’t get out of his mind. The room they had stayed in was numbered ‘413’. The date of his birthday. It might have just been a coincidence, John surmised. Ordinarily, John would believe in any coincidence. It meant not having to parse through all the boring facts and figures. He hated facts and figures. This, however, was different.

The number 413 sparked a sense of complete and utter disturbance in John’s otherwise ordinate life. It was as if, however much he tried, the number always resounded in suggesting something important. It popped up often, in various locations. He would absentmindedly look at the time during work hours just to notice that his vision focused on the watch exactly as it struck the 13th minute of the 4th hour of the afternoon. It clinged to his mind and didn’t let go. The number kept him up at night with dreams he never seemed to remember, but which kept imprinting on his brain over and over again.

April 13th, 1996 was his birth date. The day he had come to this world. Whenever John pressed his father for details of his conception, the man would just repeat the same phrase - that “you came to me on a very stormy day near the old family joke store” - as if he were still talking to a child too immature to understand the biological intricacies of conception and the need for two present adults of the opposite sex. John never asked him about his mother. If anything, his father might have given him the answer plain and simple, but John always wanted the conversation to come up naturally. Although how that would happen, he didn’t know. There were no photos before his infancy, and ever since then John and his father had lived alone. His father didn’t have any stories from before John’s birth, and everything casual around the dinner table usually centered around the bland and uninviting tales of his work-place, from which, no further questions could naturally come without another monologue about the broken fax machine. Years eventually passed by, and even on his father’s death bed, John couldn’t muster up the strength to breach the topic. He had been there for his father during his last moments, and he wasn’t about to question him like that.

Still, the date of his birth was the only connection he could find for the strange number, but somehow, it wasn’t enough to explain the phenomena stalking his unconscious thoughts. People could recognize any important number their minds had memorized over the years, but for John, there was none so profound as 413. He didn’t spot his social security, his pin number, or even his own age as accurately as he could find 413 whenever it came up in his life. If Gamzee did in fact book the room for them, how many different factors did it take for the room to land exactly on that number? The place was huge, after all. There were bound to be other, equally cheap options for different rooms in the hostel. No other resident had passed the duo this entire time. If it was John leading the way, he would have never thought to book that number if there was any other option. Not even while heavily intoxicated.

John’s frustrations crept in, but he resigned from them this time and decided to keep observing Gamzee for the remainder of the walk. He was a lanky person. Definitely close to John’s age but with a cavalier and ambient attitude of someone who had never lived in a world run by strict adult reservations. His pants were wide and elastic. Something Alladin would wear if he had decided to film a 90s celebrity home-exercise tape. Then there was the west - a strange fabric that caught light and refracted it into a weird sparkle of silvery rainbow colors. When not exposed directly to a light source, it reminded John of aluminum foil. His hair was perched characteristically nest-like on his head, and made John think of Bob Ross if he had used his hair as a brush – a thick midnight black - and mixed it in the paint-thinner straight after. That was Gamzee Makara, and John had no idea what world he had plucked him out of.

They eventually reached the lobby on the bottom floor of the building, not having spoken a single word since they left room 413. The entrance door was made of thick old wood and had a paneled set of windows that looked out into a small one-way street John had no memory of.

Gamzee handed the keys to the receptionist, not before twirling them around his fingers and giving a sly wink to the woman.

“Was everything to your satisfaction, Mr. Makara?” she said, her bright company-smile failing to hide a deep set of worn eyes from lack of sleep.

She had white-rimmed secretary glasses. They were almost falling down the tip of her nose as she looked through the room ledger and checked off the key. The woman herself seemed a few years John’s senior and had a wispy feel to her - as if every action she made passed from one motion to the other without any thought put in between the lines. It was pretty, like a dance borne out of years of working the same routine every day.

“ThE dUdE aBiDeS,” Gamzee quoted, answering the question. He rested his elbows on the counter and nonchalantly let himself ramble, “SpInnErEt, WhAt BrInGs YoU tO tHiS fInE MoMeNt Of BrOlAcIoUs EsCaPaDeS i aNd My PaL eGbErT hAvE vEnTuReD iN.” The sentence barely came out as a question, but John could see that he was expecting an answer.

“I work here, Gamzee.” she stated, raising an eyebrow, her lips a tight line, “We can’t all 8e living off trash heaps and 8orrowed money. Some of us still want to fit into society.”

What had he called her, Spinneret? John mimed the name on his lips. The two seemed to have already been acquainted.

Regardless, John couldn’t argue with the lady’s scornful retort. He himself had found that to press on with the whims of society was the easiest route to stay connected with the boons that it would, perchance, give back to him in the form of goods and services. John’s journey to employment followed straight in his father’s footsteps, and enough was said about that for John to immediately go numb at the thought of going to work tomorrow. It was Sunday.

“WoRd.” With that, Makara moved off the desk and straightened his back which set his joints cracking. He let out a satisfied sigh and proceeded to place an arm around John’s shoulders, placing him amid the conversation.

“mY pAl EgBeRt HeRe WaNtEd To KnOw AbOuT hIs RuN-iNs WiTh ThE aBySs.” He gave John a quick squeeze and proceeded, “I wAs ThInKiNg AlL lIkE, wHo ElSe BuT tHe FiNeR oF tHe SeRkEt SiStErS tO eXpOsIt ThAt DeLiCiOuS tRoPe WiSdOm.”

The receptionist sighed. “We’re past that, Gamzee. I’m not here to give out a long exposition to one of your… well, friends? I guess, just so you can up and leave them out where you found them again.” She turned away, plucked out a small paper note and wrote something down with a ballpoint pen attached to the counter.

“You can find the laundry dryer on the door to your left. The clothes should be ready for pick-up. Take this and follow the signs. The owner h8s when the guests don’t pick them up in time.” Looking at John, the receptionist pushed the tiny piece of paper towards his end of the counter.

“He can take his stuff and go back to his life like the rest of us are so desperately trying to do.” She looked straight at Makara, her eyes with a glint of sincerity, “Please, Gamzee, for the sake of you and me – we’re done trying whatever this is.” Gesturing at John, she gave a slight look at him, paused, for a brief second eyeing him over, but then turned back and appeared to be resoundingly busy for the remainder of the interaction.

John wasn’t sure what to think of this. Their words came out as foreign. As if he were not part of an inside joke. You had to be there, a voice told him. He didn’t want to intrude, and frankly, the prospect of his old clothes made up the totality of his decision-making process. Apart from that, just out of sheer curiosity, John prompted to ask the lady a few questions about the hostel before he left.


	5. A sense of increasing numbers

The Hostel sat in the middle dregs of downtown. This wasn’t Maple Valley anymore. The relatively small suburban city of John’s childhood was all but swallowed by an ever-growing mass of population, and with it grew the number of services that lurked to position themselves at the behest of their vast resource of consumers. John knew as much, but he was reticent to let that change his ever-present outlook on life. A nuclear dignitary like his father, John felt content with a quiet lifestyle, only coupled - as was natural - with the occasional lapse of a drink or two during the evening fatigue. A laborer’s pride and practice.

John had left the lobby in search of his clothes soon after his questioning returned with an unfortunate lack of responses. He cut it short partly because of that, but also because he felt embarrassed and kind of awkward standing out in the open with nothing but a bathrobe. The receptionist’s name was Arania Serket and Gamzee had stayed to wait for John by passing some time teasing the perturbed lady during work hours. The establishment she ran was called “The Empress Hostel”. She hadn’t posited much information after that, but it was on all accounts a distinctly private estate. While there were occasional guests, she said - ranging from tourists with financially limited means, or - as much as John currently was - guests sleeping off a heavy night of intoxication - the majority of the patronage found this as more of a long-term residence, enjoying a quiet life in the middle of the ranging metropolitan area.

John could empathize with that. He too was caught up with the change in landscape, and before he had any ability to come to terms with the skyrise time-lapse of urbanization - like a zoo animal released in a dangerous wilderness - he kept hidden in the childhood home he had always been fond of.

The Empress Hostel was relatively new. Established just a few years prior to a boom in population density on the west coast. John had never thought that this could be a place many might call home, yet he felt an odd attraction to the limitless expanse that hid in it a vast array of people he might one day acquaint himself with. Gamzee’s complete contrast to any of John’s more established friends grew on him, not to mention his untraceable way of captivating John’s more well-hidden thoughts. Then again, John didn’t have many friends to begin with - all on strictly opposite sides of the country.

After another set of corridors, John reached a cacophony of whirring washing machines. The laundry room was basic but retained the same professional regulatory standard that the hostel’s public quarters managed to evoke. The instructions Arania had written down pointed to a dryer labeled 3, and John quickly made his way to check out its contents.  
A sigh of relief escaped John’s lungs as he quickly spotted his missing outfit. It was all there – his non-distinct grey jacket, the matching trousers, dress shirt, and black tie. Pleased at the sight of something familiar, John slowly and methodically picked out his belongings, straightened the creases as much as he could, and put one layer on top of the other. It felt good having everything back in one place. Although, John couldn’t release a ping of anxiety at his still missing phone and glasses. Those, however, were soon found in a plastic bag relegated to his miscellaneous trinkets next to the machine – phone, glasses, a few bits of change, and his keys.

John seemed to have missed some new texts from his old pal Dave:

DS: so Im guessin you’re still out doing the whole egbert joyriding spree you do every weekend  
DS: but hear me out imma keep this short and simple  
JE: Hee hee, another one of your hot takes I presume?  
DS: listen john this is serious  
DS: im gonna be real with you  
DS: straight down the finish line pigskin in hand  
DS: the coach keeps yelling for a pit stop but I just keep running.  
JE: I’m pretty sure you’re misappropriating like all of the sports metaphors :/  
JE: All of them.  
DS: the reff keeps on throwing red cards like theyre fucking shuriken or something  
JE: Hahah, so what’s the big revelation this time?  
DS: who fucking cares about all that did you hear about the executive order washington passed recently?  
JE: Umm, the one about taxes or something?  
DS: of course you didn’t  
JE: Hold that thought! This dude offered me another round!

*new messages*

DS: holy shit okay im just gonna finish my thought ok  
DS: the tools in office brought up a need for “an increased work-force productivity”  
DS: were all cloaks and daggers about it too like if that shit meant anything other than horse fucking nothing  
DS: theyre sending in affiliated over-seas ‘experts’ apparently who knows fucking where and how  
DS: like over-seas can mean anything now  
DS: i can tell my damn cab to go over-seas and ill end up in a ditch off the interstate in bum fuck nowhere  
DS: anyways this same shit happened down here too  
DS: not to mention the added secrecy behind their housing and regulatory policies  
DS: id be down to chill with some cool fools from out of town but they dont even tell us where theyre kept  
DS: like sure weve got all these people now but theyre rushed off in airplane hangars and work in government contract jobs in the desert  
DS: shits smelling quite alien dont you think  
JE: Not this again >:(  
DS: oh shit good morning to you too i thought you up and fuckin died there my bro  
JE: Yeah no, just a mishap with the whole “getting home at a reasonable time” thing.  
JE: I slept it off in town. Getting my affairs in order as we speak.  
JE: I’ll send out the funeral date shortly :B  
DS: that bad huh  
DS: so youre gonna be all mopey and shit like usual  
DS: ive got it on high authority that hungover John sucks and doesnt listen to my frankly sick ass theories  
JE: I’m sure there’s a good reason for all the added worker pool.  
JE: I mean have you looked at the economy lately? It’s all over the place!  
DS: john you couldnt tell economy if it sat on your chest like a fuckin sleep paralysis demon  
JE: Hahah, you got me there! Economy sure sucks!  
DS: yeeeaah sure  
DS: so you still need more persuasion is what im getting from this  
JE: I just don’t see how aliens come into play like at all! There must be a better explanation for all these people coming shenanigans.  
DS: bro if there were any other explanations I would have already solved them and made a movie about how shitty the government is or something  
DS: maybe get adam sandler out of retirement as the lead role for the president  
DS: make a real ironic take on the capital system  
DS: call it Idiocracy 2: shit makes less sense but at least its not about iq levels dropping over some bullshit survival theory or some shit  
DS: im sure youve seen that shitty movie back me up here john  
JE: Idk I feel like it was pretty good for its time!  
JE: Like it predicted some semi-reasonable stuff and Joe still managed to do pretty funny slapstick.  
DS: who the fuck is joe  
DS: you know what never mind i havent seen the movie but im sure it predicted the extraterrestrial neo-colonialism thats happening now  
DS: are you telling me i should scrap my new huge indie movie idea john?  
DS: are you saying idiocracy beat me to it?  
DS: shit man  
DS: i had the script set up and everything  
JE: Heheheh, I’m sure its gonna be as rad and unpredictable as the rest of your stuff!  
JE: Still haven’t caught up to the newest releases.  
JE: Got work and all you know how it is.  
DS: dont bother my old movies went straight down the drain after the release  
DS: cant have a decent reception these days the reviewers are fuckin up the entire premise  
DS: its like their level of depth is a shallow kiddie pool and they jumped in headfirst to prove a point  
JE: Heheh, alright but you’ll have to send me your new director’s cut again! Your voice helps me fall asleep.  
DS: bro thats weird and creepy and second of all theyre all directors cuts i literally made a point to narrate over the entire thing  
JE: Oh, okay. :V  
DS: anyways i got a taxi waiting for me theyre having a screening off in some warehouse somewhere and apparently its this real political jab thats supposed to rile up some kind of message about anti-imperialism  
DS: total bs of course but if im there it might actually get people to do something with all that pent up sticking it to the man energy  
JE: Who’s calling who weird here :B  
JE: But okay I’ve got someone waiting for me too. I’ll tell you about them later!  
JE: Though I’m not sure where to start. It’s been a rough couple of hours!  
DS: alright peace out ill text you when i think of more propagandizing tactics of persuasion

With that, John closed his phone and placed it neatly inside his jacket pocket. He wasn’t sure what to make of Dave’s theory. It was silly, of course, but he himself didn’t have the slightest clue about where the recent phenomena of mass migration came from. He had gotten used to it, living so close to a large center of the population that had come from similar lucrative dealings. He came to think of them as valued city folk in the grand scale of societal wealth. No one John met seemed especially congruous and different. The people he occasionally ran into were all quiet citizens minding their own business like the rest of them. There weren’t new cultural trends, and any culturally relevant market opportunity had all but been squished under the unprecedented monopoly on commercial services already in place.

John thought about Dave for a bit. He was best friends with the man yet there was so much he had missed out on after they went their separate ways career-wise. Their usual pestering of each other continued, but life always had a way of interrupting meticulously crafted lines of dialogue. They talked about pretty much everything, but mostly it was Dave who came to John to vent about the usual misgivings of the ‘system’ or his hyped-up new movie releases. John had a hard time picturing Dave as a full-fledged director. He imagined him wearing Jodhpurs and chuckled aloud at the idea. He noted that teasing Dave about his fashion choices would be a good idea for later. John always felt like the suit and tie was appropriate in most occasions, and practicing a little dapper etiquette gave great lengths to get oneself in well-dignified circles. Dave would probably have gripes about that way of thinking too. John didn’t mind it. His best buddy was completely different in all aspects of their lives, but he and John had a way of bringing each other in check when things got too out of their wheelhouse. More John than Dave but pulling Strider back down from the excess drama of show-business was something John thought Dave desperately appreciated.

John made sure he hadn’t left anything in the dryer and walked back to the lobby, socks and all. After seeing his last night’s conversations, John felt the need to question Gamzee a bit further to get a sense of what he had really been up to last night.


	6. The mirthful messiah

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things escalate down

It was time to leave the Emperess. There simply wasn’t much else to do here and Gamzee had gone and curtailed the rest of their welcome out. Makara assured him he knew where they were heading. John, stalling from behind, tried to engage with him on friendlier terms.

“I know we don’t know each other that well,” he stammered, “but that doesn’t have to be the case! You… Hey!”

Makara leaned against the thick wooden exit and pushed it open. Not looking back, he seemed adamant about where he was going. It was John who was not following the message.

The sunlight blinked through in an instant, giving his nauseous head spasm something more to suffer over. Yeah, the hangover wasn’t conveniently written out of his memory just yet.

“I’m sure we could be great friends if we just-”

“8etter not forget your shoes, Mr. Eg8ert.” Arania interrupted, inconspicuously noting the rack by the door.

John nodded and smiled awkwardly. Gamzee, oblivious of everything, egressed and proceeded down the street. John slid in his loafers and picked up the speed, pushing through the door and nodding goodbye to the receptionist.

His companion lit a cigarette ahead due west. There was a bustling midday crowd scurrying along by them. Men and women sharing a Sunday mood through and through, non-plussed by the goings-on of your average passer-by. Lax, comfortable in their own skin with distant looks and a slow shifting gait - all a unified whole, leaving Makara the distinctly visible outsider.

John tried to keep the conversation alive. He caught up, equipped his glasses and shouldered next to his lead as they headed down the street.

It was hard figuring out what went through Gamzee’s head. He was as difficult to focus on as he himself had a difficult time focusing. An enigma of Rastafarian prophetism. John couldn’t decide which aspect made it worse. What John had come to accept was that regardless of his various eccentricities - Gamzee looked at him as a friend. At least that’s what John felt ever since he first paraded himself in that robe back in 413.

“Like I said-”

The crowds diverted letting Gamzee pass along with ease. John had to keep close not to be rammed by the opposing flow, essentially creating a small island of their own mutual space. His eyes focused through his glasses and relayed the extreme contrast Makara held against the background. Like a reverse chameleon - he turned his surroundings into an uncanny valley of limbs and colors that were shifted out of the spectrum they ought to normally reside in. Someone had opened reality, edited it, and dropped Gamzee in without making sure he matched the ambiance.

“-hah, okay, let’s walk and talk. It’s just that, well. You see, what happened last night. I’m not sure if I know you as much as you know me. We’re kind of starting off from the beginning here – at least I am. It just feels like, you know, wrong of me to expect that you would follow up on where we left off if I don’t even remember who you are.”

John paused, seeing his friend’s lips curl up in an answer.

“sOmEtImEs, I wOnDeR, mY bRoThEr:” the distinct voice filtered through the throng of people passing by. He set the butt in between his fingertips, ready to deliberate, “ThEy DoN’t TeLl Me MuCh On ThE aCcOuNt ThAt I’m lEsS dIsPeNsAbLe.

GoTtA lEaVe ThE fUcKiNg HaRd StUfF fOr ThE lOwEr CaStEs, RiGhT? wElL, dIdN’t TeLl Me FuCkIn’ ThAt - ThAt’S fOr SuRe.”

He stared up surveying the straight crack of the sky moving through the surrounding rows of buildings.

“i’M fUcKiNg SeEiN’ ThE bIgGeR pIcTuRe NoW.”

“Uhm,” John placed his hand above his brow, shading his eyes and peeking up at the sky as he walked. The Sun looked normal. It was a hot summer equinox. It blazed and absorbed into the dark asphalt. His shoes felt like they would melt in this heat. It was hard to picture the sun not ever having been where it was now.

Until it wasn’t.

A long narrow shadow appeared overhead, eclipsing it almost entirely. The street ran dead silent. All movement stopped, the crowds stood to watch. The shadow moved slowly and methodically. It was peering through the crack. At John, at Gamzee; everyone at once - paralyzing, alien, monstrous and completely unreadable all at the same time. A large, floating, hovering forked island.

A mass of red jumbled tentacle-like protrusions fountained out of it like limbs. It was like one of Rose’s books. Hell, John hadn’t thought about Rose for a very long time. Why did this of all things make him reminisce?

Gamzee Makara turned away first. No one paid mind. John alone, himself not knowing the extent to which what he saw was real, faced his friend in disbelief.

“You’re part of that, aren’t you?” John managed to mutter out.

He pointed at it, dramatically. It made complete sense. John couldn’t say it. He couldn’t explain it, there was no way he could prove that these two entities were related. But this was the truth. It was undeniable, deep within some kind of logical parameter in John’s subliminal subconscious. Why he couldn’t remember; the memories that haunted him; the number. Gamzee was all part of it and he knew it from the second he met him. They had to get out of here.

Dave was right. Oh, my god: Dave was right!

John widened his eyes. Gamzee held his hands out, dropping the cigarette and chuckling.

“sEeDs FoR a WrEtCh Of A fUcKiNg TiMe, EgBeRt.”

Screams, then smoke. Red darkened clouds overtook the sky. The ground cracked - a red beam shooting out from the ship. It traced the street, burning through people, leaving no trace of them behind. Gamzee looked into John’s eyes and smiled mirthfully.

Gamzee Makara was no more. He was pulled back out of reality, a cloud of dust left in his place.


	7. A sick nasty heat of the moment

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Time for a brutal action scene for our intrepid protagonist.

Time stopped for John Egbert. He was abashed and disillusioned by the reality facing him, and relative to his state, there was nothing around that remotely gave him any reason to act. He was spared still, yes, but the forces currently exhibiting a threat to his life were as foreign as their literal alien form.

Gamzee was gone, incinerated; his wakeful presence still hung in the air like a shadow left by a nuclear catastrophe. John could see his face, his laudable personality. He knew this man for a mere morning, yet his influence was immeasurable. There was no going back to his life, John knew. Whatever this was, whatever was to come – if the world as he knew it would still exist, if HE would still exist for the next few heartbeats -, John was never returning to who he was before.

Still, he was spared. For now.

The blast lapsed after killing Gamzee. The laser sputtered and shut off, leaving a trail of smoking cracked rubble singed through the street. The space ship above glinted in foreboding colors of red and blue, hovering ever so slightly higher and higher directly above.

There was a ringing in John’s ears, but he could still make out the screams, the blaring alarms and the collapsing buildings erupting his senses even more. He began moving, slowly at first, shaking off the shock. Bending his joints felt more like a dream than anything else.

The traffic of people was frantic: the ones still alive ran for their lives, banged on doors in search of shelter or hid against the walls, rapidly typing or calling on their phones for help, hoping to feel the voice of their loved ones for one last time.

John picked up the pace. He was hoping to move further out from the city – to the suburbs, somewhere where the ship would be less likely to follow him. With the air pressure landing against his scalp, John could feel a wet spot on the side of his face. He didn’t feel any pain but the shock over his body had left him feeling almost nothing entirely. His feet raced against the ground awkwardly, like his joints were refusing to bend smoothly. His mind raced somewhere high above his head, leading from a distance.

He turned his head, looking for alleys along the road he could cut through, but none looked safe enough to move across. While his head was turned, on the side of his periphery John saw a swarm of red armed creatures flying through the ship’s side hatches. They were descending through the sky and zooming forward into the crowds. To his dismay, John saw these creatures, no, they were drones, picking people off the air and eviscerating through them like water. The sky was swarmed and moving closer by the second.

There was no other question about it. Switch of plans - John had to get out of the open space. Staying in the vector of the on-coming assault bore a strict sentence to death city, and John wasn’t fond of neither cities nor dying in that respect probably. Clutching the side of his face during this bullet-round of decision-making, John felt a seared gash of semi-dried blood crust the left part of his temple. He was dizzy but determined to leap off away from detection.

He pushed over on to the next street where a line of cars stood abandoned: lights on, doors ajar, alarms reacting to the blaring terror bearing through their sensors. John acted fast, arching a sick nasty slide off the hood of the closest one - a red Kia convertible -, before sliding into the driver’s seat, ignition in, ready to roll out. If John wasn’t so fucking terrified at this exact moment, he would see it as his duty to slide on a pair of stolen shades and drift off into a highly choreographed chase scene through the metropolitan cityscape. He didn’t have any shades, though, and the gash on his face started to mix in with a headache not staunched by his pumping adrenaline.

Instead, as John rushed to close the door behind him, a huge drone landed on top of the roof, its sharp mechanic claws piercing through it like cardboard.

He pressed on the gas, pushing the drone to calibrate to stay mounted from the force of the acceleration, and attempted to steer out of the traffic onto the opposite lane where he could have the freedom to rush out and egress on a highway or something. John pulled out but smashed against the back of the next facing vehicle, until pushing off and sliding into opposing traffic, breaking a few headlights in the process.

Next, the roof of the car tore loose, and the drone smashed into the front windshield obstructing John’s view. They continued off down the street, speeding up in the process. John ducked and leaned out from the drone’s attacks, but he was powerless to move anywhere away from the wheel.

With more attacks coming his way, a respite of a single moment let John intuitively hear the oncoming laser powering on within the drone’s front-facing cannon. He knew that that thing would most ultimately combust him upon impact. Having exhausted any other opportunities, John released the wheel, holding still on the gas, and turned to face his aggressor. The light within its core began to blaze brighter, and John had no other option but to get on the mech and grapple on it for safety and evasion.

His hands reached out to its bottom hover engines, but his flesh received waves of burning heat from the searing metal mass. What a fucking stupid idea. The drone opened and lurched one of its claws, squeezing around John’s ribs, almost crushing them.

He was face to face against the void, and the void, inexplicably - a hole of light about to consume him - stared back, cold and steely-eyed. John was about to die, and he had no one to see him off.

He closed his eyes, and the laser pushed through the opening and an unprecedented heat fell over John’s grimaced face.

A few moments passed and, surprisingly, John could still feel his muscles contort, the pressure of the pincers on his ribs and even the cold rush of air pouring through the open air of the moving car. He slit his eyes open with whatever was left of his instinct to survive, and saw the red laser intercepted by a purple one from behind. The two forces collided, a light of immense radiation and heat bouncing off from one another with John in the middle.

The purple laser began growing in volume. John heard a guttural scream of concentration behind him, and the drone combusted in his wake. A charred chassis bound off onto the rest of the car, which began tumbling ever so close to a point of impact on the side of the road.

Finally, John, feeling his death was inevitably written into the narrative, fell onto the barreling wreck, metal parts pinning him down, and the feeling of confusion and utter fatigue come over him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Will John survive the brutal mesh of car parts and robot guts racing to a lethal stop? Who was John's helpful laser savior? Obviously, this is all painfully obvious. But stay tuned to the climactic reveal anyway!


	8. The vapid brain-scape

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The narrative inexplicably shifts, and a new force is introduced.

The road to death is often paved with unnerving sacrifice in part of its owner.

There is power in life. The heart of the deceased is weighed in the scale against the feather of a goddess. Its value is measured in two parts:

The Just, that’s the first, is taken by force, deserved. Purposeful in its own right, ultimately necessary, and without prejudice.

The Heroic, that’s the second, given willingly, sacrificed. Its purpose fulfilled much in the same way.

These measurements are not scaled through physical means, rather - they contain within them the true weight of the universe. The two battling sides converge and continue down an ultimate path of equilibrium. When you strip the code in search of a true axiom – an ultimate fact –, you find that you’ve inevitably led yourself down in a paradox. A self-fulfilling prophecy that never wains, falters, nor otherwise becomes untangled. It’s an enterprise void of meaning, yet somehow inexplicably governed by it.

Often there is no sacrifice and no meaning. Sometimes a story ends like a tree barred from space to grow any further. As if that weren’t enough, sometimes you find yourself barrelling down a highway pinned down to a Kia convertible by a giant alien death robot.

I guess what I’m trying to say is: wake up, John.

“I’m dead.” You say, obviously acting melodramatic.

“You’re being melodramatic, John.” I answer, practically swimming in romantic irony.

“I died and you’re whatever’s left of my dwindling subconscious. I’m trying to make peace with myself.” You surmise, unrightly.

“Okay, unrightly isn’t a word but you can be so excruciatingly apathetic sometimes, it’s unbearable to write a decent dialogue with you,” I can’t believe I say that - this is so embarrassing, “this would be much easier if you just opened your eyes, John.”

“Rose?”

“I guess.”

It’s not that I have to guess who I’m supposed to be. I’m obviously Rose Lalonde, but this is a medium of pure narrative bereft of the governing rules of matter. I’m serving a purpose outside of my worldly being as some sort of lazy writer’s surrogate for the express purpose of expositing the current circumstance and giving motivation for the character.

“So, are you the real Rose or just my imagination?” you say. Wait, okay, so this is definitely just John pretending to be me pretending to talk to himself.

Alright, we’ve established two things so far. You can read plain text so there’s practically no need for dialogue. I’m most likely you and you’re me, but I’m also Rose. And this, and here I wave around dramatically to accentuate my point, is your brain high on death juice.

“I’m not following. So, are you saying I’m talking to myself but also at the same time I’ve made a Rose copy with my brain, and we’re engaging in some sort of puppetry roleplay about how much it currently sucks to be me?”

Precisely.

“And I’m not dead, right?”

I don’t think so. Otherwise, how would I be here?

“Right…”

Look, I don’t make the rules here, John. Or, I guess, I do? Anyway, this is your weird vapid brain-scape personifying an awkward discussion between two disillusioned friends who haven’t even seen one-another for, what, 15 odd years? I hardly see how this pertains to me in any way.

“I guess. I think I just miss you. I’ve been thinking about you lately and it’s weird. The situation I’m in, I mean. It feels like you or even Dave would be perfect for this. I’m not cut out for the whole world ending rigamarole. I’m just not sure I can handle whatever, and here I wave around dramatically to accentuate my point, all of this is.”

John, you’re losing me here. I’m you but you’re hiding some fairly pertinent information, i.e., your current situation from your sub-conscious self. I seem to be locked out for some reason. I quite literally have no idea what you mean by, and I quote, ‘all of this’.

“I guess that figures. Even when I’m open about it, I still don’t want to make it clear for myself.”

If I understand correctly, and I do, since I’m you - this is an extremely vulnerable moment for you currently. And to make some sense of it, or, rather, to introspect over it in a healthy way, you’ve managed to extend your mind outside the boundaries of all known laws of physics and birthed me out of your brain. And I appear to be cognizant of the fact.

Also, I’m Rose Lalonde: your old friend whom you’ve never bothered to contact all this time.

“Sheesh, when you say it like that, it sounds kind of horrible. I didn’t mean to create you. I’m not sure what you are, like, do you live here? Do you have free rent in my head from now on?”

I’m honestly not sure whether to be flattered or terrified. In a sense, if I were the goddess Athena birthed from Zeus’ head, I guess that would imply you think I’m the wise old mentor? Would I be leading you into a hero’s journey which mirrors that of Odysseus?

Alternatively, the prospect of existing in this void without a form or purpose is more akin to my particular style of horror fiction. If that were the case, I’d find myself more resembling Calypso.

After all, you’re stuck here with me.

What am I to you, John? I think you have to define it for me. Your creation deserves some sort of reasoning behind its conception.

“I’m really not sure. Okay, wait. Let’s roll back a bit.

I think I just wanted a friend? I lost one recently. He wasn’t close, per se, but he seemed to be leading me somewhere I couldn’t go by myself? Does that make sense?”

It seems like you were right in the beginning, then. And I was right by default:

‘I’m whatever’s left of my dwindling subconscious. I’m trying to make peace with myself.’

But you are deliberately not considering the main crux of this predicament.

“I was leading you there.”

Don’t go all power-hungry on me, John. I’m obviously the rational part of your brain. Somewhere out there you’re still alive. It’s time to turn your attention to the future.

“Alright.”

I’m ready.

“I guess I’ll leave you here? See you around?”

Whatever else is there for me to do.

“Harsh.”

“thii2 guy ha2 friied hii2 fuckiing braiin2 out. ii'm 2urprii2ed he'2 2tiill aliive.” A slurred voice fazed through the muted void. “iidk kk, ii thiink iit’2 a lo2t cau2e.”


	9. A working title

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John meets his saviors.

“SO APART FROM THIS STUPID INSURGENCE, WE NOW HAVE TO TAKE CARE OF THIS ASSWIPE OF A HUMAN BEING.” a loud annoying voice sparked through John’s head as he began regaining consciousness.

Staying still, John went over all the injuries he had suffered since waking up, stifled an inaudible whimper and continued to overhear the conversation without intrusion. It felt like he was hit against a cliff by a thunderous wave, left to die. Rose was still somewhere up in his head. He could feel her watching, and her scrutiny gave him a sense of calm in the otherwise precarious position.

“can you keep your 2tupiid comment2 two your2elf? thii2 wa2 liiterally your iidea two begiin wiith.” the hurried lisped voice resounded off to John’s right. He was laying supine and the voice carried out above him, pausing the clattering of a keyboard nearby, “you’re liiterally two fuckiing annoyiing two work next two.”

“YEAH, TAKING CARE OF YOUR SHITTY ATTITUDE IS PART OF ME TAKING CARE OF LOSER ASSWIPES.” the first man lashed back.

“ii can’t fuckiing beliieve what you’re 2ayiing riight now. iif iit wa2n’t for me, you’d 2tiill be out preachiing liike human jegu2 two uniintere2ted ape braiin2.”

“OH, YEAH, SO BEING RESPONSIBLE FOR CREATING THIS UNIVERSE SUDDENLY INVALIDATES MY THRONE OF CONTRACTUALLY BEING A STUPID FUCKING HOLY MESSIAH.” the voice heated up, and the conversation escalated, “HAVE YOU LOOKED UP IN THE SKY LATELY, DUMBASS? NOTICE THE INTRICATE SYSTEM OF GAS BALLS THAT NOTE OUR SUPERIORITY AND RESPONSIBILITY OVER ALL THESE WORTHLESS NEANDERTHALS?”

“whatever kk, you’re 2o out of iit becau2e you couldn’t be bothered two make a plan when the conden2e fiinally 2howed up two kiick all our a22e2.” the voice continued without a pitch in volume.

John raised his eyelids slightly, taking in the view through his eyelashes. The sound of a keyboard filled the room again. John was laying on the ground. There was a skinny man sitting in front of him, typing away at a computer. He had a weird set of glasses, each lens colored blue and red respectively. His long narrow fingers tapped rapidly, as if one by one each key popped like bubble wrap. Like a game of rhythm, the lines of code on his screen jumped off from the last and began as if to the precise beat of a metronome. Every so often, the young man would retroactively stop, place one hand under his chin and inspect the work so far.

“IS IT MY FAULT YOU WERE SO SLOW AT HACKING THE SHIP’S ROUTE?”

“kk-”

“NO, I’M SICK OF YOUR EXCUSES. FRANKY, YOUR TYPING IS GIVING ME A MIGRAINE. ALL YOU’VE DONE IS PULL THIS DEATH SACK OF A TERRIBLE SPECIMEN OF THE HUMAN SPECIES INTO OUR HIVE AND YOU HAVEN’T EVEN GIVEN IT A NAME YET! PERSONALLY, I’D GO FOR ASSWIPE; IT GOES WELL WITH ITS OWNER.”

“Oh my god.” the recipient answered, however, it did not stop the barrage of yelling coming his way.

“WE’RE SUPPOSED TO RALLY THE OTHERS! THE FRONT OF SECRECY IS OVER - DO YOU REALLY THINK TRACKING THEIR MOVEMENTS IS THE PERTINENT ISSUE HERE? SHE JUST LANDED! WE’RE NOT GONNA SEE HER RETURNING TO URANUS ANY TIME SOON!”

“kk 2hut the fuck up: a22wiipe ii2 awake,” he spoke, pointing indignantly at the lump of hurt that currently translated into John’s body. He was caught in the act.

“OH,” kk’s voice returned to its normal, while still louder than average, rasp, “HELP HIM UP I GUESS.” He suggested.

“ii wa2 gonna leave hiim on the floor iin2tead –“ A spark of red-blue energy lifted off from his eyes and John’s body contorted to the whims of its power – “but iif you iin2ii2t he bleed all over your re2piite cu2hiion…” suddenly levitating him onto a softer surface. While the bed he was on was much more comfortable, the force that had landed him there left his bones aching from the impact.

“FUCK YOU, SOLLUX.”

John faded his artificial feign and sat up, trying to act more presentable to his supposed saviors. While his ribs were definitely grazed, and he was bleeding from the side of his face, most of the blood had already dried off, if not – had been cauterized by the lasers.

The other man – kk – standing at the doorframe of the dimly lit room finally faced John superfluously. He was a - if not short - definitely small in frame man with a thick arrant expression of someone who was used to being constantly constipated. He was wearing a bandana that hid his voluminous hair from his forehead. His arms seemed perpetually crossed. “WELCOME TO OPERATION ‘KARKAT SAVES HIS PITIFUL CREATIONS FROM GETTING CULLED BY THEIR SUPERIOR ALIEN OVERLORDS BECAUSE FOR SOME REASON HE’S THE ONLY ONE WHO CARES ABOUT THE UNIVERSE HE MADE’.”

“iit’2 a workiing tiitle,” Sollux chuckled offhandedly, keyboard clattering continuing, “and we do care: ju2t not wiith the fanatiic driive of a mongoo2e.”

“So, you’re aliens?” John muttered out. Acknowledging their existence seemed as minute a detail as he could start out with.

“WOW, I THINK ASSWIPE HAS A HEADPAN SOMEWHERE UNDER ALL OF THAT GRUBSAUCE.” Furrowing his eyebrows, Karkat sat level with John and continued, “YES, OBVIOUSLY. THOUGH BY MY UNDERSTANDING OF ALIEN-SHIP, WE’VE BEEN HERE LONGER THAN ANY HUMAN SO TECHNICALLY YOU’RE THE ALIEN HERE.”

“kk that doe2n’t make any 2en2e.” Sollux interrupted.

“DO YOU WANT TO EDUCATE ASSWIPE OR SHOULD I CONTINUE DOING EVERYTHING HERE?” he spat back, arms still crossed. His body was sinking deeper into the chair.

“Nah you’re good,” the spectacled man waved him off, “ii’ll check iin on the aliien 2hiip.”

“My name’s John.” John shrugged and leaped into the fray. He felt a lot lighter after having almost died today. It was a miracle he was able to breathe at all, and the whole bizarre situation felt in need of a bit more humor. That and Rose, who was giving him a sense of grounding. “Though asswipe kind of fits the state I’m in,” he concluded.


	10. The meaning of life

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John learns about his alien acquaintances. Meanwhile, Karkat takes a time-out.

The duo was residing in an apartment building a few blocks away from the Empress. Karkat insisted upon not staying with the rest of the crew. By crew, John surmised: aliens. Sollux had found the place; money didn’t seem to be an issue for him and while Karkat had tried to decorate it, it seemed like a place more similar to a stake-out HQ. The bed John sat on was a rickety metal clunk of steel. The mattress, while not covered in blood, was bare and bulky. It was the only bed in the room, and John intuited that Sollux slept at his computer desk. They had a kitchen stacked full of dirty dishes and a door perpendicular to the exit leading to the toilet.

Karkat had thrown a fit and locked himself in there. Occasional grunts and thumps echoed through the thin walls. It wasn’t anything John had said. Sollux briefed that it was only a matter of time, and that ‘the whole iinva2iion thiing had triied hii2 patiience’. It was best to let him cool off and the two agreed to wait for him. Karkat would return and exposit the situation further – it seemed like it helped him maintain some sort of feeling of authority, which, in turn, gave a sense of motivation for Karkat to act further.

Sollux wasn’t much of a talker. Mainly because it seemed that Karkat was usually the leading interrogator. John had always believed in aliens, if only in an uninformed sci-fi fantasy sort of way, but he had never expected them to act and look so human. Like invasion of the body snatchers, they were secretly living amongst him all this time.

Nevertheless, the idea of them having created humans in the first place was a little out of his pop-culture trope wheelhouse. Karkat had explained it as – John didn’t really get the whole thing but – a game in charge of paradoxically reproducing the universe through means of coordinated character development leading to: ascension into gods for said universe, a ‘CROAK BEAST’, and some particularly nasty repercussions if the system was in any way altered from its main path. These were John’s gods, which explained pretty much everything. If these folks made the universe, it was a miracle they had all gotten this far.

That’s where the invasion comes in. Apart from John having met these badass magic-wielding sci-fi beings, turns out their home planet was, in a sense – a tyrannical universe-colonizing species that, besides being centuries ahead in futuristic technological advancement and having acquired a magical game that gave them the power to become gods, was in the process of ravaging the cosmos from all other intelligent life in its wake. Both of these facts, as Karkat had painfully tried to explain – were entirely coincidental. Talk about neo-colonialism, eh, Dave?

“Speaking of which, did you get those powers from the game?” John asked, breaking the silence. He stopped and realized they hadn't talked before, so the sentence came out of nowhere. John backed up and elaborated, "I mean, because of the whole telekenesis."

Sollux was lounging on his computer chair, arms crossed behind his head. The two were taking a break, and Sollux was undoubtedly enjoying the quiet that came with Karkat’s absence. He cleared his throat and spoke up,

“Nah, diifferent ca2te2 - diifferent abiiliitiie2. ii’m a p2iioniic. get2 pretty lame once you’ve liived wiith iit your whole liive,” Sollux sighed and pulled off his glasses. John saw two eyes of the same hue: blue and red without any pupils. Finally, something that looked alien. A small sprout of veins covered them. They were blackened, bulging and spread an inch away – it looked painful, “u2e iit two much, you overload iit: get voiidrot. u2e iit two liittle, well, miight a2 well diie wiithout iit. diie eiither way.”

John’s eyes hurt just by looking at it. He scratched behind his temples. The pain of his injuries was starting to climb back. Death was hopefully behind him – at least the premature kind.

“Wow, I didn’t think aliens would be so gritty. You’d think a race with superpowers and intergalactic travel would, you know, have less of a dictatorship back home.” John spoke out of his head – he was genuinely interested.

Sollux shrugged and placed his glasses back on. The chair creaked under his weight as he settled back in. He didn’t seem to have anything else to add so John continued while he could get a word in.

“Castes?”

Sollux nodded, “Feel that liiquiid come out of you? that 2appy 2hiit that you human2 2eem two lo2e more than u2? well, miine’2 a golden mu2tard. the conden2e ii2 a fuch2iia – 2he run2 the 2how.”

He paused for a second after a hefty sounding thump came from the other room. It was followed by a cry of pain and more muffled cursing. He concluded,

“that’2 pretty much all you need two know two get the gii2t of iit. you go up from the ru2t2 and burgundiie2, exponentiially iincrea2iing iin 2ociial welfare, longeviity and 2trength. we get the power2 and diie prematurely. fuckiin 2chooled, kiid, that’2 our cla22 2y2tem now get u2ed two iit cou2e your a22 ii2 on the cull lii2t.”

“What about Karkat?” John added, looking at the door dividing them.

“What about hiim?” the tone wasn’t forceful in any way, but John could feel that he had struck a nerve. The line was cold, instant and seamless, and Sollux’s tone shifted to its previous dissonant apathy. It seemed like besides their constant bickering, the two really did look out for one another. Whatever John had asked was best to be left alone. He took a pause and carried the conversation down a different route.

“Karkat said this was supposed to be your planet,” John inhaled a breath and took a moment for his point to sink in, “why were you keeping it a secret all this time?”

Sollux answered without pause, “We diidn’t. at fiir2t, we got bored; pretty much the world’2 laziie2t 2andbox game after what we’d been through. waiited a few eon2 for 2omethiing two happen – aa learned how two wiind u2 all forward eventually. once you human2 came about, we ju2t 2ort of 2ettled iin wherever we could. triied two liive and all that a2 long a2 we were here. why would we have two tell you anythiing. thii2 wa2 our world, you were ju2t the factory liine that made our liife a liittle more comfortable.”

It was not common for a human to possess the knowledge of the meaning of their existence. For John, being used as a glorified construction worker seemed a bit underwhelming. He didn’t expect much from this life, but the idea that he was a byproduct of a world run by dorks who lucked out from a video game seemed, well, it seemed like exactly what it was.

Though John wasn’t concerned with it for much longer. Sure, they were ‘made’ for the aliens to use them, but that didn’t mean that they hadn’t flourished all on their own for nothing.

“So, I’m guessing you came to this time because our technologies became increasingly more equal?”

Sollux let out a laugh, “Hah, 2ure. ii wouldn’t call thii2 archaiic piiece of crap equal. but yeah, you make a poiint. we would have travelled further iif iit weren’t for-”

“IF IT WERENT FOR THE FUCKING SEA BITCH HERSELF.” Karkat entered, closing the door behind him carefully. He seemed to have calmed down somewhat.

“NOW IF YOU TWO HAVE STOPPED GORGING EACH OTHER WITH YOUR PETTY LIFE STORIES, WE HAVE A PLAN TO MAKE AND ANOTHER WORLD TO SAVE.”


	11. Sounds like a plan?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Karkat assembles a team. The group of heroes grows, and they might just have an ace up their sleeve to gain a foothold in the on-coming conflict. Meanwhile, John struggles to realize where exactly he fits into all of this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm back, babeyyy. Consider this the first resurrection of the action-packed chronicles of Earth E. More to follow!!!
> 
> SPECIAL THANKS TO I_sold_my_soul_to_thefandom FOR GIVING ME THE MOTIVATION TO CONTINUE, AND WARMING MY HEART WITH THE GREAT WORDS OF ENCOURAGEMENT.

The flurry of connections Karkat levied were a carefully picked out group of conscious allies ready to stand up to the Condesce’s puppeteering machinations. A network of resistance, a conclave of troll subordinates. A decentralized web of elevated figures who were privileged and in-the-know before the chaos of this morning had shown its gritty reality. The original 12. The ones most aware of the gravity of the situation, undoubtedly aware that the world they had come to reside in was on the brink of falling back in the hands of a maniacal, power-hungry force of domination - those of whom were still alive and accounted for, of course. Some hadn’t been heard from for years. Heroes, Legends portrayed in human mythos as far as the first morally conscious mammalian.

“WHERE, IN THE UNGODLY FUCK, IS EVERYONE?” Karkat bellowed.

Three had arrived.

John threw his hands out for the new-comers, graciously taking upon his new role as maid butler. A flash wave of enthusiasm welcomed the new arrivals. It had been 2 hours since Sollux had sent the distress signal through to any channel that they had marked active and troll-adjacent. Half of which were residents of the Empress. Most of which had unanimously voted to keep the intrepid revolutionaries on ‘read’.

However minute and completely doomed their futures seemed, John appreciated the plan in action. He took a back seat and settled on sprucing the place up a bit: de-clogging the kitchen and poking at the slurry that was congealing in the bathtub.

“Gross”. It was gross.

But the arrival of Karkat’s brave companions was as good an excuse as any to drop all and invite the pantheon of gods inside. What secrets might they hide, what powers could they hold within them with which to march and take down their tyrannical leader? Could it be, were they standing on the precipice of Mount Olympus as Zeus hurled bolts of lightning?

_Pshooooooooooooooo_

Breaking and imprisoning the patriarchal Titans that had for so long roamed and laid waste with their unprecedented ubiquity over life and the cosmos? One could very much hope. But as far as bravado and majesty were concerned, this was not it.

The bare-bones living space had plenty to stand around in, but it didn’t have a central point of congress; try as Karkat might from the force of shout alone. John was relegated to the far end, straight-backed against Sollux’s desk where the constant clattering marched the arrivals like a war-drum.

Here they were.

A small, staturesk troll girl with a cane and red-glaring glasses leaned against the far restroom door. She was huffing the air like nobody was watching. He could rightly assume that she was the one, in fact, not watching. He couldn’t, however, point out whether the choice of eyewear was intrinsically troll-culture, or whether they crash-landed in the bargain isle of a Halloween store.

She patted her cane with the beat of Sollux’s keyboard and smiled with a set of sharp teeth that seemed to leer out whenever her face contorted into a big sniff.

Next at the round table was a taller, posturized troll with a loud whisper of a sense of complete propriety. She seemed stone-cut like silk from marble and distilled Karkat’s meandering into a veil of calm and leveled responsibility. Apart from the other trolls who were disheveled and torn apart at the disaster they were here to solve, Kanaya greeted John personally and fell into small-talk with Terezi in the back, whom she had also introduced.

The last troll stood wide-shouldered and sponged up most of Karkat’s gripes about the dis-coordination of the team. He was sweating quite profusely with a grimaced face and loadbearing eyes that stood cold but sharp to a point. It was quite inspiring really - the way he placated Karkat’s commands with an insurmountable duty to the cause. Well, really, he seemed like he wanted to siphon Karkat’s control but couldn’t get a word in during the whole ordeal.

John didn’t catch this troll’s name, but he felt a bit intimidated and didn’t feel like approaching the two dueling personalities.

The duo stood at the very center of the room and, as the team slowly shallowed down to incoherent whispers and jabs, Karkat gave two impromptu coughs, motioning the larger troll towards the bed behind him.

“NOW THEN, LET’S CUT TO THE CHASE.” Karkat’s tone had changed drastically. He was breathier, more harmonic with each syllable flying off his tongue like a general giving orders with perfect clarity and no room for misinterpretation.

“(oh, god, he’2 gonna go all preachy on u2, ii can feel iit.)” Sollux whispered, nudging at John.

Not wanting to interrupt, he kept quiet.

“I KNOW THINGS LOOK BAD RIGHT ABOUT NOW. OK. NO. BAD DOESN’T FUCKING BEGIN TO DESCRIBE THE LEVEL OF TOTALLY SCREWED WE ARE RIGHT NOW. I WOULD HAZZARD TO GUESS THAT WE ARE SO SOAKED IN PREMATURE FAILURE, IN FACT, THAT THE MOTHERFUCKERS THAT DITCHED US WERE SMART ENOUGH TO JUST COMPLETELY IGNORE ANY CHANCE WE HAVE AT RESISTANCE AND HAVE ALREADY STARTED TO PERPETUALLY SLAM THEIR THINK-PANS IN THE SAND MAKING A HOLE THE SIZE OF THEIR RUPTURING SHAME-GLOBES, AND DECIDEDLY SUFFOCATING THEMSELVES IN THE MOST PITTYABLE WAY POSSIBLE.”

“K4RK4T, YOU D3NS3 N3RD.” This was a new voice. It was screechy and came from the back of the room. Terezi’s tongue was as sharp as her teeth. Karkat didn’t let up, but his voice was now back to its usual staccato.

“..AND THE FACT THAT OUR ONLY TWO TEAMMATES WHO WERE ‘SLASH’ ARE IN ANY WAY ASCENDED HAVE – EITHER THROUGH SHEER APATHY OR NARCISSISM – DECIDED TO FUCK OFF TO OUTER SPACE, IS JUST OUR FUCKING LUCK.”

Terezi raised a finger.

“NO PUN INTENDED.” which was enough to answer her question.

“Karkat, As Much As We Would Enjoy Readdressing All The Bad Blood, – No Terezi, That Pun Was Also Not Intended – I Fail To See How This Helps Our Case.” Kanaya’s voice was calm and soothing. It bulldozed any sound of clarity that Karkat had ever hoped to achieve and the sarcasm was nigh untraceable.

“yeah kk ju2t 2ayiing but we’re all kiind of 2tiill bummed out about lo2iing friiend2 left and riight, kk? can we ju2t-” Sollux added before getting cut off.

“-I would suggest we consider a%ionable plans. If we were to rebel against the Condensce, there is a need for a STRONG-willed high-ranking negotiator to e%trapolate our demands. A liaison of sorts, you could say; one with royal enough b100d to solicit a meeting. Perhaps sir Makara ought to be informed of his duty to lead the deliberations.” the incredibly bad posh-sounding gritted teeth verbiage was the last thing John expected to hear out of this troll’s fantastically chiseled and veiny throat.

Karkat was non-plussed.

“ALL YOUR OPINIONS ARE CONSIDERED AND WILL BE HENCEFORTH FORWARDED, BY MY BRAND-NEW HUMAN ASSISTANT, ON TOP OF MY VERY NEATLY STACKED PAPER PILE THAT I WILL USE TO WIPE MY PROGNOSTICALLY LASERED ASSHOLE.”

“H3H3H3H3H, K4RK4T WHO 4R3 YOU K1DD1NG. 1 B3T YOUR P3T HUM4N W1P3S YOUR 4SS FOR YOU. H4H4H4H4H...” The following cacophony of chuckles was, for the most part, a confident way of striking just how much that line was supposed to slap.

In John’s head, being the butt of the joke was part of the fun - pun very much intended - although he couldn’t help but feel conflicted and a little bit concerned. Cleaning after gods was becoming his pastime, and he may very well have already been expected to wipe the asses of his makers, perhaps reaching into the nebulae of creation, black holes abounding.

“I Would Hate To Curtail The Increasing Preponderance Of Colorful Situational Reflections, But Perhaps Negotiation Would At The Very Least Give Us Insight To The Extent Of The Condesce’s Machinations?” Kanaya interrupted.

“Perhaps Gamzee Could Be Swayed To Carry Out The Task Of Being Our Intrepid First-Contact?”

“WH3R3 3V3N 1S TH4T DOOFUS, 1 M1SS H1-”…Terezi’s nasal additions began to chortle out of John’s audial periphery.

As the lull of murmurs and agrees followed to generally question Makara’s whereabouts, Gamzee’s death started to sink in a little closer to the surface of John’s thoughts. He had previously, under some pretense of sci-fi shenanigans, passed his death off as a here-to-fore elaborate zeitgeist of cultural trope trappings. He was supposed to come back in act 3, completely bewildering the main villain and giving the heroes a just big enough of an opening to strike the final blow.

No, Gamzee was all but particles in the wind. His death was very real. Fuck, and it’s all John’s fault. Of all the first impressions to give to your makers, letting one of them die in front of you, having one spend the night with you. Oh god, should he say something, how would he begin to describe everyone’s favorite troll Gamzee Makara dead just as the narrative story unfolded out of the equilibrium of normalcy.

“CAN WE FUCKING FOCUS FOR ONCE. I WASN’T FINISHED.” The only voice loud enough to break apart John’s panicked subconscious.

“(oh, thank god…)” he mouthed.

“I’M SURE YOU’RE ALL WELL AWARE OF THE CURRENT NATIVE IN THE ROOM AND HAVE PONDERED WHETHER THIS EXCEPTIONALLY BLAND SPECIMEN OF THE HUMAN SPECIES IS BLIND AND DEAF AND HAS BEEN OFFERED THE LUCRATIVE DEAL TO LIVE AS OUR NEW PET HOUSEMAID.” with broad gesticulation, Karkat exhibitioned John for the arrived party.

John's face was stuck in a combination of mournful and incredibly guilty-looking expressions which coincidentally also made him look constipated. He was hoping none of the new guests were telepathic.

“WE SAVED THIS POOR CREATURE AS HE WAS CAREENING THROUGH THE STREETS UNDER PURSUIT OF HER SEA-WITCH’S METAL KILL-BOTS AND IS UNDER MY WATCH AND WILL BE USED AS A GENERAL INFORMANT ON ALL THINGS ‘HUMAN SOCIETY’. WE NEED TO KEEP THESE WORKER BEES IN LINE. AS FAR AS I’M CONCERNED, HUMANS ARE PRETTY MUCH OUR ONLY VALUABLE RESOURCE AT THIS POINT.”

This was news to John, of course, and he wasn’t just about ready to represent the whole of humanity. Wasn’t that something the president was supposed to do? Should he… should he take them to his leader? He was reticent about the idea, especially considering the alarms and questions the government would have already raised after the, uh, genocidal beginnings of the Condesce’s pursuit of invasion.

But Karkat didn’t give John time to answer. His presence was already accepted, and John had successfully climbed the ladder from part-time housekeeper to full-on Human Resources Representative.

It would take a while for that to sink in, but Karkat had a plan, and he was just about to get into the first step.

“SOLLUX, TELL THEM WHAT WE’VE FOUND.”

“iit’2 not much but we’ve triiangulated a 2ettlement that ha2 ju2t about reached acceptable level2 of technology.” Sollux typed in a few lines in his console and a window popped open. It was a map with coordinates zooming into a spot somewhere in the Pacific. It didn’t look like much at first but then, after having zoomed closer, turned out to be a small island in the middle of pretty much nowhere.

“whiile mo2t human 2tate2 are bu2y wiith mutually a22ured de2tructiion, there are a 2carce few that have followed a more ‘famiiliiar’ method of progre22 iin tran2portaliizatiion, 2endiifiicatiion and armament2.” he adjusted his glasses.

“WH4T H4PP3N3D TO NOT M3DDL1NG 1N HUM4N-BUSS1N3SS, SOL?” Terezi chimed in mockingly.

“nobody follow2 that 2tupiid rule,” he answered.

Karkat squeezed in, annoyed, “NO ACTUALLY I GAVE HIM PERMISSION, AND FUCK YOU, I THOUGHT YOU DIDN’T EVEN READ MY RULES.”

Terezi let out a dramatic gasp and pulled her hands over her face in shock.

“WHY, K4RK4T, 1 4M TH3 P1NN4CL3 OF JUR1SPRUD3NC3. 1 THOROUGHLY SK1MM3D THROUGH YOUR PROPOS4LS 4ND 4DD3D CORR3CT1ONS.”

The following exchange involved Karkat and Terezi wailing their appendages in an effort to prod one another in the most ineffectual manner possible, until, after several pokes and a similar number of prods, the two lay supine and entangled on the floor.

Terezi proceeded to list off apparent rules Karkat had made. Although from his reaction, they seemed to be the corrected versions.

Sollux continued over the chortles and screams as the muscular troll began ripping the two huddled masses apart, sweating, if that were even possible, even more so than usual.

“contact ha2 been liimiited 2o far but iit wa2 actually iincrediibly ea2y two conviince her two proviide her re2ource2 at our dii2po2al. apparently thii2 one doe2n’t get a lot of vii2iitor2.”

The next set of key-strokes flipped open a picture of a woman, John’s age. He didn’t know who she was, and judging from the looks, wasn’t a settled office-worker he would have had the pleasure to meet during his inebriated escapades. She was wearing a chipper smile underneath a great mane of dark hair that flowed down to her lower back.

“2he iinheriited a lab from her decea2ed adult, uuuh, ‘care-taker’ and ii2 currently re2iidiing at the2e coordiinate2 wiith her lu2u2.”

Kanaya reached out to help Terezi locate her cane. Karkat pulled himself off the ground without taking the other troll’s hand and brushed the dust off his clothes. He continued as if nothing had happened,

“SHE SHOULD BE HERE AT ANY MOMENT.”


	12. A fine line between fiction and reality

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The gang patiently waits for their new benefactor.

The pièce de résistance kept the apartment silent as the party awaited her arrival. John’s sight of the main door was blocked by the huddled masses. If there was an empty tin can on the ground, it would be served a half-hearted kicking.

The trolls waited skeptically, Karkat feigned a sense of boredom but John could feel the impatience in his eyes. He fiddled with his bandana, tied and retied it, and kept rummaging through his hair. The rest looked like cats ready to furrow their backs.

John, a man of modernity, slid into his phone and pretended not to focus on the tense environment. Dave hadn’t reciprocated yet, and John couldn’t blame him for it. Even if Egbert had direct sight of the ‘Arrival’, it was likely Dave’s current mission to calculate the exact parameters of the we’re-fucked-o-meter and what exactly the Condesce’s next move would be.

Sollux said the ship had disappeared into orbit after first contact. She was plotting something alright. This was just a precursor to what the wicked space queen was ready to do for a swift and bloody victory. Fear was the first attack. Kill a few dozen, make a big show of it, then vanish.

The people would fall into madness soon, reports of an otherworldly being were bound to crack even the most restrained skeptics and conspiracists. Once the fear had gestated long enough and tension struck a fine line between recuperation and outright anarchy – that’s when the human milieu meat would be seared to perfection.

He didn’t have the heart to text Dave. What help would he provide if he himself was unaware of the extent of the balance being shaken? Part of John wanted to trust that the trolls were capable, and that made texting Dave an admittance of their failure. The consolation of which would end up breaking him, resigning a piece of him that divided the line of fiction and reality.

They would figure this out. They had to.

*new messages*

JH: jooooohn!!!

JH: john ;0

JE: Woah

JE: Hey Jade!

JE: Man, I sure am glad to hear from you.

JE: Things are starting to get tense!

JH: what do you mean John??

JE: You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.

JH: try me, i’m full of surprises!

JE: There’s a situation…

JH: sounds serious!

JE: It’s quite serious; the most serious, in fact.

JH: does this happen to involve the cosmically domiciled?

JE: If that means aliens then you are exactly correct!

JE: How did you know??

JH: John I think they’d prefer not to be called that, it sends the wrong idea

JH: to answer your question,

JH: …i happen to be coming to see a bunch of them as we speak!

JE: No way!

JE: I’m starting to think everyone’s known about this way before I did.

JH: aw, don’t worry, I just met them a bit ago myself!

JH: it’s all very exciting!!

JH: aaaaaaaaa ;0

JE: uh, what?

JH: and i’m also coming to see you very soon!

JH: just wanted to give you fair warning

JH: this will be the first time we’ll ever see each other in person!

JE: wait, what?? Sorry Jade but I’m not even home right now.

JH: duuuh, you’re at Karkat’s

JH: (…)

“Okay wait wait wait what?”

“HUH?”

“Pardon?”

“(H3H3H3H)”

“2hut the-”

“Someone’s At The Door.”

“H4H4H4H4H4 WH4TS GO1NG ON?”

JH: i’m heeeeere!

“ITS HER OPEN IT FUCKASS.”

“As sole highb100d, I’ll take authority to e%cise this command at once.”

“ew gro22 you fuckiing leaked on me.”

“Wait, if that’s who I think it is, let-”

_-Shlub Shlub Shlub, thud, clank, rattle rattle, clink, creeaaaaaak._

The door opened with a strong and swift breadth at an impeccably wide angle for all to see. It was her, the woman in the picture. It was her, wasn’t it? That was really Jade Harley.

“I brought bugs!” her voice was as pleasant to hear as John ever had the good fortune to imagine. The surprise was heart-palpitating. The context was heart-wrenching. It was all beginning to become a little too much.

“Oh, uh, I meant – Grubs! Really I didn’t have much notice to figure out what exactly it was that you preferred.”

She stood in the doorframe with a basket in hand and passed it down to the sweaty troll. The handle broke in his fist like a plastic straw. A litany of insects began crawling out as it fell onto the floor.

“Aw beans, you’ve let them loose!” she cried out in surprise.

Fiction and reality had crossed paths and made a love-child. That love child was now in the shape of Jade. She was tall and slender, with round-rimmed glasses, wearing high-socks, a poncho, and a mid-way khaki skirt. Even while surprised and frowning, her eyes sparkled as bright as stars.

“Woah, hey Jade!” John screamed from the back.

“John, jooooohn!” she cried out a second time, face agape.

“WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON.” it was Karkat’s turn to speak up.

“Hello, everyone!” Jade reached out to the rest.

“Greetings.” Kanaya welcomed, “I’m Kanaya - This Is Terezi And Equius - Pleased To Meet You.”

“WH4T 1S TH4T SK1TT3RING 1 LOV3 1T?” Terezi squirmed in.

“We’ve Been Told-” she noticed Terezi squash a bug under her feet and paused with a ghost of a grimace, “-That You’re Here To Provide Us With Assistance.”

Karkat waded through the crawling insects and pushed past the two trolls, quickly interrupting, “HEY YOU, BACK OF THE LEADERSHIP LINE, YES HELLO ITS ME, THE ONE WHO CALLED YOU WE ARE HAVING A GREETING NOW WHERES THE REST OF THE EQUIPMENT?”

“Oh, haaah, you thought I’d bring them here?” she inquired, however, her pupils kept fixating over the floor where Equius was attempting to collect the bugs, inexplicably squishing them under his fingertips. Terezi had three in her mouth already.

“I was hoping you’d come aboard my ship back home!” she smiled, giving John a sly wink of assurance. It was sure nice to see an old friend, John thought.


	13. Hot discussions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As the crew prepares to take off for Jade's safe-house, the sun glares over anticipatory.
> 
> Jade brings light to continuous developments.

The intrepid team of seven ascended.

A set of catwalk stairs brought them to the roof. The spindly, almost fuming rays of light hit John like a truck, winding him. His muscles were sore and the ache and itching at his wounds were starting to get at him.

You couldn’t call this weather - it was dreary and hot, recalcitrant to the needs of humans and trolls alike. The type of weather you’d expect to never end. The type of heat to smoke out the most stubborn of vermin.

The only shadow in sight ran along with the ship: a monstrous behemoth nesting on the flat roof, completely out in the open. A sheen of white coated the exterior. Once his eyes adjusted, John began to see the intricacy of its curvature – the aerodynamic nature of a space-ship – with excruciating detail put into whatever was needed to keep its inhabitants alive in the cold darkness of space. The sturdy frame - all its panels and fins - rested on three extended legs that pressed into the hot concrete.

Jade looked on in pride, arms resting on her hips. A captain reunited with her mistress: a well-cared-for creature, a relationship built on trust. In relation to the ship, bold blue letters on the side read ‘Lady’. She had a deck, but how one would hope to leisure on it while breaking through the exosphere, John had no idea.

The trolls winced openly. Their skin looked pale, cracking, even singed by the buzzing air. Had it not been for their eyewear, it appeared, the trolls would disorient into a pack of blinded birds dazed by an unexpected window in their trajectory. Sollux pressed his glasses further up his nose, Terezi huddled down, supported by her cane and Equius’ rippling exterior seemed to glisten like boiling oil under his tank-top. Karkat, with a furrowed brow, pulled down the bandana to shade his eyes, and his neck retreated in between his shoulders. It was disorienting to look at: an emphatic display of complete disgust.

It made John realize, first-hand, that this wasn’t their home. The sun wouldn’t heal them or give them power. It seemed to, for the most part, actually inhibit the trolls like kryptonite. They weren’t in pain, but used their accessories adroitly, skillful to protect themselves. The trio appeared as if hiding from the sun was a reflex that filled them with fight or flight. John, however, felt exposed and attacked by the glare, completely defenseless to its touch. He threw the blazer over his shoulder and undid the tie. Flight, it seemed, was on the menu today.

Kanaya was the only one displaying uniform composure. She glistened in the light, breathing in a lung-full through her straight nose as she joined alongside the two humans admiring the craft.

There was no surprise to it - the ship was massive, parked right on the edge perfectly, with the ledge looking down on the deserted streets more than forty stories down. Out behind them, Karkat was having a rise at no one in particular.

“MARS WAS BETTER. AT LEAST THE LACK OF AIR WAS LESS SUFFOCATING THAN THIS PIECE OF GARBAGE.” he stammered, bucking at the sun.

His voice soon zoned out, but it wasn’t the heat or the added distance between the two groups. It wasn’t even the whirling engine that roared and combusted whatever fuel it was feeding on once Jade approached it. Well, it was mostly the latter, but it was also John’s encroaching disbelief. He parted his lips at the wonder, keeping his head posted while moving closer to Jade.

“Why didn’t you tell me you had a spaceship!?” he exclaimed.

Jade let out a whistle through her buck teeth, “hoo boy, look at my baby purr!!”

She proceeded to raise an eyebrow at the question, turned and shook her head disapprovingly.

“You sure ask a lot of questions these days.” she said, pressing him further, “That’s so unlike you, John!”

“Besides,” she concluded, smiling, “you never asked me if I had a spaceship!”

“She Is Quite A Sight To Behold.” Kanaya sounded off, “Not As Big As The War-Ships; And Certainly More Lifeless Than The Cruisers Back Home.”

Jade pouted, “What do you mean lifeless! Lady’s full of spirit, and she’s the only thing you have to get to ‘any’ semblance of safety!”

She tapped her foot on the concrete. The troll looked troubled for the first time since John had met her.

“She, Uhm. Certainly Seems Happy To See You-“

“Heck yeah she does!” she congratulated Lady, moving for her. Jade patted the ship’s hull and a hatch lit up in green, automatically opening to the interior. A set of stairs lead up to spacious quarters, illuminated by the neon.

“Jade,” Kanaya spoke, seeming distraught. “You ‘Have’ Been Out There.”

John had no idea what that meant. But Kanaya’s clear cadence was replaced with something else. Her words – their fluidity – was somehow compromised, as if a lake was beginning to freeze over the shoreline. Kanaya looked up. Her stare couldn’t be followed, but John could see it extended far beyond the sun.

It was not like Jade, for as far as he knew, for her face to lower and her smile to fade out so quickly.

“No,” she replied, her voice almost inaudible under the hull of the ship, “I haven’t seen your friend for years.”

“Her friend?” John followed up. “I thought you said you hadn’t met the trolls since today!”

Jade glared daggers at him and Kanaya moved past her, briskly climbing into Lady. Jade took in a deep breath and wiped the sweat off her brow, coming forward without leaving any space between her and John.

“Remember how I said I’m full of surprises, John?” she said, taking a step to literally leer down on him.

“Yes, I met these trolls just now. But like Karkat told you – there are twelve of them. Probably even more now that the Condesce is here with a whole entire army!”

“But there are twelve of them who we can trust. Humans, John: ‘We’. Maybe even more than that but I won’t pretend to understand the ‘other twelve’.”

Jade raised her hand over her eyes, using her body to point at the sky. She took a few steps back, raising her voice for John to hear.

“I met two when I was up there for the first time; once I figured out where gramps left the ship and-”

John realized he was holding his breath the entire time and wasn’t hearing her properly. Eleven now, a voice told him.

Sollux moved past them, nodding at Jade. She nodded back, stopping mid-sentence, and let him enter the ship. It was only after he walked past that John saw Karkat trailing behind like a baby elephant, holding onto Sollux’s shirt. His eyes were closed and squeezed into his sweater. It was cute.

“We’ll talk about this later,” Jade said, more hushed this time.

She moved aside to let Terezi tap her way through, with Equius watching her step. John followed Jade’s lead, staying behind in the sun. Jade walked to the foot of the stair and waited until John joined her.

“We need to help them, and they’ll help us, okay?” she said. “I’m not liking the odds, but we need them to have any shot at winning this fight!”

Jade sighed when she saw John’s confused stare.

“I’m not gonna pretend I’m not rattled by who they are! And what’s happening! But we need to focus. Focus focus focus.” She rambled the last bit almost to herself.

The sleepy young girl John had always pictured was a phantom imitation of the real thing. He was awed and didn’t know how to respond.

“Jade…”

“You’re amazing!”

She smiled. Brightly this time - it fit her face perfectly.

“Come on,” she beckoned, “there’s a lot I need to tell you.”

The hatch swooshed closed behind them. A few moments passed and the ship hovered a few feet off the ground and then whooshed through the air with a streak.

WE HAVE.

LIFDOFF.


	14. The Lady and the girl

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The team travels for their next stop. Jade reflects on her past, and how she got to where she is.

The ship’s wheel felt firm in Jade’s hands. She trusted Lady, pressing into her hull for any additional support she might need during the ride. It wasn’t easy getting here. Jade had never been to a city before. At least, not so close down. It all felt disorienting. There were simply too many people for her in the world. Thankfully, she had found exactly one that needed her help the most.

Lady purred underneath the panels, and it made Jade drowsy and calm. John was sitting beside her, asleep. He had clonked out straight after climbing in. It was peaceful in the cockpit above the deck. Her, Lady, John and the ultimate expanse of the universe before them, feeling smaller and more cramped by the second. The trolls were downstairs, and Jade gave a sigh of relief that she could finally sit alone and relax for a while. It wouldn’t take long for them to arrive, Lady was good at what she did, and fast too, but for the time being, and with John safe and by her side, she couldn’t take an opportunity like this to waste.

Jade hadn’t taken Lady out for a while. There wasn’t a need to, but more importantly – she was scared. Not for her, but for the ship. It wasn’t like she could just make a new one, and Lady was special. It was her Pop’s, and whatever passion for her namesake he had once given her was now unimportant. She wasn’t one of his blue Ladies anymore, portraits of whom still collected dust in the deep recesses of her childhood home. She was Jade’s, and she would take care of her. The ride was smooth, and she took that as Lady appreciating her concern.

Once she lifted off above the clouds, Jade could finally relax a bit. She zoned into the white dunes of moisture and thought of happier days. Days when she would daydream about all kinds of fantasy, and about her friends. Days spent tinkering, learning what she could of the small world that was all hers to explore, and eventually, days of her and Lady out on adventures.

There were things in her dreams that frightened her. But it had all been a game at that time – spurred by her overactive imagination. At least it was, until the point when it all just went away, as a child growing out of her imaginary friend.

Jade was never normal, by any means. She grew up in a lab, secluded and alone. In earlier days, she would have had Beck, her trusted companion, and guardian. Even earlier before that, the vision of her Pop’s calloused hands picking her up were almost as distant as her dreams.

Jade had resigned against thinking of Beck – it made her too sad. This was not the right time to reflect on her beloved friend’s passing. Embalming him still gave her nightmares, but it had to be done. It’s what he would have wanted – it was tradition.

Jade thought about how her life had suddenly changed drastically. It was after Beck when she had gotten older in her twenties. By that time, Jade had been so impatient with her various hobbies, that it felt better just to creep about the lab, half-conscious, figuring out what exactly it was that had kept her curious, worldly and excited as a kid.

She would spend months going through the lab, tinkering and maintaining her garden, watching pumpkins mature, age and die, then come back again. She felt lonely, sure, but she could always count on John, Dave or Rose to keep her company. It wasn’t long, however, until whatever kept them online was washed away by the intricacies of life among other humans, which she could rightly not imagine herself.

Instead, Jade tried to understand whether growing up was something innate, and something that would eventually happen to her too. She didn’t feel different, just more resigned, and the loneliness that had gestated through her young adulthood was now replaced by routine and living vicariously off whatever boons were hidden in the labyrinth of her home.

One day, in particular, she found the ship. It was buried under a mound in the front yard, with a hatch that she had never spotted during her exploratory adventures throughout the island. The hatch opened up to a spacious hangar on which Lady sat, ready for Jade to introduce herself. Initially, Jade thought it was a yacht and almost considered finding out a way to push it to the beach. Leaving home meant getting out of her own head. At that instant, she was hopeful, and had faith that just out of her reach, out on the other side of the horizon, her friends would be waiting for her.

But it was all much more elaborate than that. Once she learned who Lady really was, it was only a matter of time that her childhood fancies would come true after a life of apathy and silence. Before long, Lady became Jade’s pet project, and, eventually, she became her best friend. For the months that followed, and after test runs and bruises, Jade would finally have a chance to leave her tiny, tiny island for good, and promised never to return.

Now, coming back to it, Jade didn’t feel as if she had broken that promise. She had John with her now. She had waited for him long enough and had taken him from the dangers that always lurked when other people were involved. She cared for him, and whatever connection he had with the rest of the species, she cared for that too. Because that’s what her friends were – humans. She, functionally, didn’t count herself as such. And if it was anyone who had the chance of saving them now, it was her.

Back in her late twenties, Jade had had the time of her life. She set off through the skies, explored the oceans and the limits of what Lady could offer her. Distance was no longer an issue, yet she still kept Lady and herself secluded.

As much as the outside world exited her, Jade knew she and Lady didn’t belong in the world her friends inhabited. People were like a construct she had learned about from books and online. They weren’t individuals to Jade, just a part of nature, an ant farm slowly pushing itself further and further away from the rising sea they had mistreated. Jade imagined all humans in an anthill, surrounded by the ocean, scrambling to the top. It felt surreal to be a part of something that monstrous, that foreign, and just something that chaotic. Granted, Jade only saw them from really high up.

Instead, Jade traveled to the relics of the past, deep within uncharted or treacherous territories that humans had left, used and ruined.

She saw sprawling deserts and dunes, sunken cities, and rich radiated forests of striking, almost unnatural green. It had all been around not long ago, but Jade wasn’t worried about what the world had come to. It was an adventure for her, and most often she would feel like a sole arbiter of a new world that had now become her playground.

Food hadn’t been an issue ever since she learned how to use her portable transportalizer, and Lady was pretty much the only one in the world that appreciated the hot rays of the sun.

It was years of this before she grew tired of all the lone things the world could offer. It felt too unreal. Her fantasies, her dreams, were always much more lifelike than the world she came to know as an adult. Her island was a little speck thumbtack on her charter, and Earth itself had become her new home. And that home had begun to become smaller and even more lonesome than the last. She just couldn't find her own place in it all.

Jade did talk to John once in a while, but he was too foreign to her now, and most of the time, she didn’t understand what his life was about. Dave, however, seemed to care about humans and the world itself more than anything else, and it was hard for her to follow along with why the world was the way it was. It was just natural for her to see the seas rise, the forests burn down and turn into desert, and cities left abandoned for her to explore, while new ones rose elsewhere. Rose, she hadn’t been able to contact her in a long time and assumed she had found another life by now - her own place. Jade couldn't stop herself from being envious of that.

The skies had eventually grown hotter, the sun beat down and seasons soon turned into heat, then broiled humidity, and then, once again – heat. Jade began spending her time with Lady out by some mountains where the shade and atmosphere cooled them down significantly. The cold felt inviting, almost natural to her, and, once up there, Jade had first come up with the idea of traveling out into space.

It hadn’t occurred to her at that time that leaving the planet was even an option. Lady was certainly up for it, but Jade didn’t know what it would mean for her to leave, and what it was out there that could ever fill in that void and solitude she had now grown into.

One day, however, while Jade was lounging on top of Lady’s deck out in the mountains in the East side of the larger of the continents – she didn’t have a name for them – she saw a vision, just like when she had when dreaming as a kid. But this wasn’t a dream, she was sure of it.

It was a headache at first, but eventually – and she couldn’t believe her eyes – she saw the clouds part open, and an image of a ship – much larger than hers – it was a meteor, in fact, shoot out of a hole in space, and fall like a comet. It was then that Jade knew that something else was waiting for her out there. If not her friends, she thought, it was something that wasn’t part of the world she had never really understood in the first place.

John woke up with a start, and Jade went out of her head, seeing that Lady had begun piloting her way down into the air above the ocean. There it was, out in the distance - her home that looked as small and bereft as ever.

“We’re here,” she said, surprised by how much she actually missed seeing her old childhood home. It was more discolored now, like a sepia image of the real thing. It was probably the change in climate, she thought, but it felt like her own mind had imprinted an old lens on it.

“Where’s here?” John said, half woken up, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes and squinting through the screen.

“Home,” Jade said, to herself mostly, but also to Lady, who floated down delicately onto the tan grass.

John was asking too many questions again, and it was high time she ought to give him some answers. But first, she would have to make the trolls feel at home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you've liked the story so far, and have maybe wondered "What's up with all that crazy John-consciousness stuff that happened in the beginning" don't worry. Some questions are gonna get resolved eventually.
> 
> As for the story itself, by my account, it's about 1/3 finished - look forward to future updates! And don't forget to bookmark the page if you're excited about how the story progresses!


	15. Decrepit old disheveled green light of hope

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The party arrives at Jade's and they begin settling in.

Jade ran her hand over the side of Lady at which point the hatch housing the trolls lit up and depressurized, before revealing four pairs of eyes staring out from the darkness. The dipping sun glinted off their irises, making them look alarmingly orange.

Once the trolls were out, stretched, oriented and ready, they would set off across the island to where Jade could lead them inside the lab. She had purposefully landed on the distant side of the beach, just so she could have a stroll over the place like she often had in the past.

“It’s an e%uberant place for reconnaissance, but I’m afraid this position will only hasten in e%tensive ablution once the planet begins permanent sanctification.”

“You wouldn’t miind growiing a paiir of giill2, ii bet.”

“I am well aware of my station in the hemospectrum. I’m more concerned for those who aren’t as fortunate with the b100d they were acquiesced to on their wriggling day.”

“leave hiim alone, equiiu2, you’ll get your p2eudo-ma2ochii2tiic kiick2 out when we all drown.”

“YOU SHOUD’VE THROWN ME OUT WHEN YOU HAD THE CHANCE, ASSHOLE. NOW GET ME OUT OF THIS RICKETY OLD TORTUREBOX SO I CAN FINALLY BREATHE AIR THAT HASN’T BEEN DISTILLED THROUGH YOUR GRIMY GILL FLAPS.”

Rickety old torturebox wouldn’t slide. For all Jade cared, Karkat could’ve stayed in his destitute beaming disheveled green light of hope he called home, but her mind was elsewhere. And so, the conversation she felt in no way having a chip in was left as white noise as Jade felt the dry grass brush past her feet.

She was home, there was still time to reflect before she had to man the guns and go out on full alert. But there wasn’t much of anything to reminisce over. The safety wheels were off, rusted out in the grass, just waiting for someone to trip on. The beginning years of her life were abandoned, and it showed. It was almost like the island itself had forgotten her, and whatever had been left didn’t want her anymore. It wasn’t home, it was a memento box full of night terrors and creepy blue ladies out in the corner of her eye. And it was her ol’ pop’s embalmed corpse facing the fireplace in a deep, contemplative manner over what beast he could extinct had he just the power to reach for the blunderbuss hanging from the mantle.

She had taken it up with him at one point. It was a few days before the decision to leave for good. Tying up loose ends and all that - her last strife with the neglectful parent figure. The two eventually sparred, and, in the midst of a stalemate, discussed the situation - he had a strong case - but she lifted the argument out onto the beach and decided he could spend the rest of his death out at sea – Viking funeral style. Her vote counted as two in matters such as these.

Equius was right. It wasn’t her unreliable nostalgia speaking - the place really had gotten smaller. And by the looks of it, a third of the island was gone at this point. The pond had grown in size. A stream bifurcated two uneven sections, mixing in with the saltwater and splitting the island in two.

It didn’t sit right with her. The island could forget her, sure, it was a conscious decision never to return to this one particular forgotten place, and move on to other equally forgotten, but strangely more insightful places to live amongst.

But if not her, where would all the frogs live? The salt would definitely not be good for them. Whatever reason there was for this to happen to her home, it had the same existentially draining twitch of seeing, first-hand, the consequences of the planet from the eyes of humans. Jade’s pastime was to unequivocally avoid that kind of thinking, and the frogs would be fine anyways.

As the group was walking to the old decrepit, disheveled green lighthouse that was her home, Jade couldn’t put away the fleeting feeling that she was being watched. Not in the “there’s movement right at the edge of her periphery” kind of watched, but more of the “someone somewhere knows too much, and their insights have a deceitful kind of tinge to them” kind of watched.

She looked up to face the descending red light of the dusking horizon and wondered how far the Condense’s eyes could reach. There was always the chance that they were way too late for any plan, and that half of the world had already been subjugated and put out of commission in whatever gruesome way she didn’t bother imagining.

Jade knew that everything they were to plan of doing in the near future had something to do with the trolls. Specifically, the ones she met out in space, on the meteor. The future of the Earth, including her life, had changed due to that one crossroads when Jade was, justifiably, oblivious, naïve and hopeful for something apart from turning back. It had been a dark time up in those mountains, and Jade had yet do understand the reasoning behind going up there in the first place, to space, expecting some kind of miracle to happen. And whatever that miracle was, it was no ‘flying through the cotton candy fields of destiny’ that she had hoped for.

And what about John? He would wake up again eventually, climb out of the ship and her claim to ignorance would have to be staunched even further. She couldn’t let him in just yet, there were things her friend would have to come to terms with himself, limiting her knowledge, but, at the same time, keeping up a front of confidence. Jade had best to be his Athena.

Athena? She hardly knew her; or had any idea of who that was, for that matter. Besides, they had reached the transportalizer and what would have seemed to be a hard pill for most to swallow, the trolls instead were happy to portalize themselves like wiping off their shoes at the doormat.

The bedroom was just like she left it, full of open wires and split apart panels from whatever crucial lab equipment she could get her hands on. Underneath that were her plushies - Squiddles - though their magnets had been cut out long ago. She couldn't remember why but it had something to do with fixing up Lady. Out of courtesy and her long history with the colourful octo-people, she sewed their poor tentacles back together. Their magnetic hugging days were over, but, symbolically at the time, so were Jade’s.

“Where’s Terezi?” she asked, once the team had figured into her old bedroom. Jade didn’t really understand the scope of Terezi’s blindness. And having her fall off behind and trail the edge of the island with that cane was a possibility that could very well have happened, however comical it was. The trolls didn’t seem concerned, though, so Jade didn’t let her voice sound in alarm.

“ARE YOU KIDDING ME?" Karkat insisted, "SHE BLANKED OUT EN ROUTE, THAT GIRL WOULD PRIORITIZE SLACKING OFF WITH HALF OF HER TORSO ON FIRE.”

Karkat’s exorcistic wails went off a key; he was not giving it his all, and his eyes gave up the half-heartedness with more interesting peripheral rigamaroles. He was squinting off at Sollux, who was practically giddy with setting up his workstation. What metal crap he could pull up from under her bed was all his to writhe over as far a she was concerned. Equius did the heavy lifting, but Sollux’s directions went over his usually enthusiastic command-driven attention after he found out Jade’s old dream bot. She forgot it was still there. The jets had been ripped off, courtesy of Jade, for a small project she had conducted sometime before leaving, and all that remained was the torso of a nearly life-like metal imitation of her former thirteen-year-old self.

Oh right, Jade had recalled that that was exactly where the magnets had gone into.

She was surprised how much the scene before her resembled a couple of children strolling through a candy store, but, in her defense, this was the closest she had been to see actual children, period. Nevertheless, the smile on her face was now fully planted in place.


	16. The point of agency

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Terezi soliloquizes.

Inside the growing intestines of the white beast of flight, Terezi swung side to side from her cane, assessing the permeating thoughts of her interconnected neurons. Not asleep, never asleep, but using her active mind as a gate to the metaphysical.

She was the yolk, the fettered sleeping dragon she kept well in her heart. She was premeditating, alone, seeing not from her eyes but through the mind of a seer. And, as a seer, I could feel the narrative fold flood onto my consciousness.

The, uh… recalcitrant troll, her mind wandering away from the tactical moves of her friends, felt, instead, the main goal she intended to place into an equation. A new goal that started out at the end of the game, and to which she had placed all her bets. She was forced to play it again and again as if nothing had changed since Karkat’s final reach for the solution of their plight.

“4ND NOTH1NG H4D CH4NG3D, R34LLY.”

It was an Equation Terezi had crossed over and over again and which was as crucial and essential as the plight of the Earth itself. The value that made life into being through a peripheral, emotional route by bringing attention from the non-canonical. One whose written name was as synonymous with the universe it inhabited, that it came first in the title.

“413.” a vowelled word escaped her unmoving lips.

“OMG, NO, TH3 NUMB3R, YOU DUMB4SS.” she corrected.

Her legs tapped the steely drum of Lady’s hull. Her un-wakeful eyes narrowed, and with the unwavering concentration made only by someone who had the experience of living through the decimation of countless worlds – she squealed like a banshe<strike>e and bit into the side of her leather upholstery.</strike>

Oh, come on now, we were just starting to have fun.

“WH4T P4RT OF YOU SCR34M1NG 1N MY H34D 1S FUN.”

If we’re being honest here, I tend to forget my own agency in these matters. And, to be perfectly upfront with you since I don’t really have a reason not to, I’m not sure how I got here. For someone who doesn’t have a body, I’ve been infrequently passing through other’s as an ambitious brain-worm.

“OH, YOU’V3 B33N H3R3 FOR 4 WH1L3 NOW, BUT N3V3R TH1S CLOS3. 1T’S 4NNOY1NG, L1K3 4 F33DB4CK LOOP OF MY OWN THOUGHTS.”

How do you know I’m here?

“H4H4H4H4.”

“1’V3 S33N YOUR TYP3 4ROUND. TH3 TR4NS1TORY, R34L-BUT-NOT R34L HYPOTH3T1C4LS OF TH3 M1ND. YOU’R3 L1K3 4N 1MP3RF3CT P1CTUR3 OF 4 P3RSON S4V3D ON TH3 M3MORY OF 4 D1FF3R3NT P3RSON.”

I’m a what, a backlog, a brain baby?

“4 N3URO-CLON3. W3 L1K3 TO C4LL TH3M BR41N GHOSTS. YOU’R3 NOT FULLY YOU, 4ND YOU’R3 NOT FULLY H1M, BUT, N3V3RTH3L3SS, YOU FULLY 4NNOY M3.”

I’d like to think that my ability to dictate the narrative of the events unfolding is of more concern to you than a mere annoyance. What if I were to… let’s say – find me in a less-than-alert mind than yours and pluck its body into a precarious situation.

Or I can just stay here and annoy you.

“OR YOU C4N JUST SHUT UP 4ND D1S4PP34R.”

…

…

…

…

I’ve had.

In your world, it’s been, what, less than a full day? I’ve been stuck here for months, maybe longer. In silence, something I can only describe as a fractured limbo, waiting for an in, an image to appear before me so I don’t tear up the place parsing through the banality of my own existence. All I have is half-truths of thoughts and unreliable descriptions.

But I can change them, and you slipped up and showed me what I can do. I have no intention of staying in the back seat if I can make my own world.

_And the titular narrator was right. Terezi’s mouth, still agape, had practiced the first notes of her banshee aria._

“YOU C4N’T CH4NG3 TH3 R3L3V4NC3. YOU’R3 1MPOS1NG 4 HYPOTH3T1C4L. MY MOUTH 1S CLOS3D, NOTH1NG H4PP3N3D, TH3R3 W4S N3V3R 4NY SCR34M. 1’M L1T3R4LLY 4SL33P R1GHT NOW.”

No, wait. Okay, but it ‘did’ happen. How did you do that?

“3V3RYTH1NG ‘H4PP3NS’. FOR 3V3RY D3C1S1ON YOU C4N M4K3, TH3 UN1V3RS3 FL1PS 4 CO1N. YOU 3X1ST 1N TH3 HYPOTH3T1C4L, 4ND SO DO YOUR 4CT1ONS. TH3 CO1N N3V3R L4NDS. YOU’R3 NOT W34V1NG C4NON1C1TY, YOU’R3 L1V1NG OUT OF 3X1ST3NC3, 4ND NOTH1NG YOU DO 1S R3L3V4NT. 1T WON’T M4K3 4 D1FF3R3NC3.”

So, what? If I didn’t matter, you wouldn’t be here speaking to me, this voice wouldn’t translate to the void of the continuum, yet Terezi <strike>slaps herself in the face and wakes up.</strike>

You flinched; I saw it.

“4ND Y3T, 1 D1DN’T.”

Did too.

“D1D NOT.”

I’m sure you did.

“D1D NOT.”

Is this really what you want to be doing with your time?

“1 DON’T C4R3, YOU’R3 4NNOY1NG.”

Terezi, I know you. I know what you think. As much as I’m irrelevant, the coin continues to spin. You’ll keep this up, but wouldn’t you rather see where it lands?

“1 DON’T C4R3. TH1S W4S SUPPOS3D TO B3 4N OUT, W3 WON, BUT TH1S STUP1D G4M3 N3V3R 3NDS.”

“WH3N3V3R 1 LOOK, 1T’S JUST 4RCH1V3S OF MOR3 TH1NGS, MOR3 THOUGHTS, STUP1D 1T3R4T1ONS, 4NOTH3R N4RR4T1ON OF MY 3X1ST3NC3 FORC1NG M3 TO L1V3 THROUGH 1T 4LL.”

I’m sorry. But if this does end - I end. I’m not ready for that yet. I want to see what the point of this all is.

“TH3R3 1S NO PO1NT.”

_She misses her. She’s alone, it’s starting to get to her._

“FUCK YOU, STOP TH4T!”

Is that not relevant: relevant to you? Don’t you want to resolve it?

“TH3 H3LL W1TH R3L3V4NC3, TH3 H3LL W1TH 3SS3NT14L1TY. 1’M DON3, W3’R3 F1N1SH3D, TH3 WORLD 1S M4D3, K4N4Y4 M1D-W1F3D TH3 SH1T OUT OF TH4T FROG. WHY DO3SN’T 1T JUST 3ND.”

Perhaps it’s not the point of this story anymore. Maybe it never was. Look, if you stop now, whatever ‘is’ the point won’t ever leave you alone. How many lives have you lived, how many times have you died, old or young?

What’s the one thing those iterations all lacked?

“OH, TH1S 1S SO STUP1D.”

Let me at least try to help you. I want to, I want to get to the end as much as you do. You have a plan, don’t let me stop you from achieving it, but I need you to help me make the right choice.

“1 C4N’T B3L13V3 1 T4LK3D MYS3LF 1NTO TH1S.”

...

“FUCK 1T, DY1NG BLOWS.”

**Heads ====>**

Tails **====>**

"41113333333333333333333333333!!!" Terezi woke up, screaming like a Banshee.


	17. Mind and Breath: Escapade

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John and Terezi find themselves separately missing out on the proximity of the rest of the team.

With a start, John came back to the material plane of existence, his wounds slowly healing, the pain – abating. What was once his life laden with normalcy, was now a quick, extraneous nap in his childhood friend’s spaceship. What was the comfortable silence of the void, was now an ear screeching cacophony coming from the downstairs brig. The narrative shift was plainly in his hands, yet John knew nothing of its significance.

Instead, he rocked himself awake, eyeing the intricate nobs and levers that constituted Jade’s ship. It was like one of those movies that were said to be set in the future, yet completely misappropriated touch screen technologies with the simple re-imagination of how big and red a certain button could rightfully be, without causing one’s idea of buttons to malfunction completely.

It was jarring to be alone again. Normally, the idea would send him into the wistful regression into liquid substances. Tying up that fleeting feeling of void in his chest was a reaction made to fill other spaces with excess influences, in a way, somehow balancing the two into a functioning condition. Yet, rightfully, it was probably just a symptom of the already existing problem.

What was once the inescapable dread of having missed something important in the past, was now the dread of having had the opportunity this entire time, and, somehow, when everything was now at stake, it was too late. The last notions of inadequacy were more like complete ignorance of his station in the world. But more importantly, among his new companions.

Which, to saunter back to the main point, were gone. It would be something to worry about, but, right now, all of John’s attention was pointed at trying to staunch the mind-boggling screech that Terezi was making underneath the floor panels. Whether or not it was a cry of panic or custom of troll lunacy he had not yet been aware of, all his faculties told him to stay put, and pretend to lay dormant as long as he possibly could.

Fortunately, John didn’t have to test his limits. As soon as his muscles had tensed to the inexplicable yodeling, they were swiftly relaxed, the screeching abated, and he was finally left alone to his own devices, audibly speaking.

A sigh, then, looking down upon his raisin, blood crusted, finagled body, he took note of Jade’s poncho resting neatly above him. It was warm underneath and smelled like fresh seafoam and a sweet tinge of fruit. It felt wrong to have Jade’s attire relegated to such a demeaning task. John felt guilty, felt that all his past deeds, however miraculous, were a total disaster. Having barely scraped through his demise, and, with the cost of Gamzee’s life, the total wreck of his own flesh. It was plainly obvious he was not suited, not in the least, with the presiding world-ending rigamarole and alien co-habituation.

With the hatch left open, John jaunted down to the brig, hoping that Terezi had left together with whatever she was screaming about. Every tiny little joint, even the ones he had never been aware of, were in searing pain. Trying not to bend his knees, John penguin-walked down the steps to find himself alone once more. The lights were off but the sea breeze and whatever daylight were remaining pulled into the ship, making sure John’s skin could feel the pressures of the outside world.

Once his eyes came to, the visage of a deserted island almost made him relieved. The thought, however morbid, of Terezi and the rest having just been eaten by a whale, leaving him the last survivor on a small deserted speck in the middle of nowhere – no responsibilities, no need to keep up with the events quickly unfolding – was a guilty and loathsome thought, but a thought he craved for nonetheless.

The tracks of a half a dozen or so footprints in the sand took him out of those fantasies. More so when he saw the Toronto skyline of a tower looking down upon him on the far side of the island. The same one he saw during the arrival.

If Jade was already sympathetic enough to leave him be to rest his sorrows, the rest would pity him doubly so for staying around to admire the vista. At least, as a lone human, he could have bullshitted some sort of reasoning why he wouldn’t be able to join them right away, but Jade made that excuse infeasible.

Once the pace of his aching wounds was met, he saw Terezi. A mirage almost, staring into the horizon from the seashore, letting the water wave on her bare feet. He felt bad about pretending not to hear her, and, as far as his joints were concerned, he was too tired to attempt to stay out of sight while she could see him skitter about at any moment.

See, John thought. Exactly what did Terezi perceive off where the sea touched the sky. She was facing the wind, probably using her extra-natural senses to perceive beyond the human limitation. More so than ever, John felt like his trust in the trolls was something he would never understand, and yet, it was there ever since Gamzee. Maybe it was that same supernatural feeling that led him into his arms those scarce nights ago. Maybe Gamzee was his savior, knowing full well what John really hid away from. It wasn’t even a maybe – Gamzee had single-handedly opened up his mind to the barrage of walls that kept it hidden. He had, by his death alone, birthed the surrogate consciousness of Rose in his head, guiding him along the path of motivation, resilience and the future before him. And Terezi, by extension – her sight alone, made him crave for that same release. That same feeling of worthwhileness, of knowing that there was someone who was powerful enough to subterfuge John’s own unwillingness to reach into himself, have her do it for him instead.

He watched as Terezi stretched her arms up, flitting the cane about her head, testing the way the wind flowed around it, and he couldn’t look away. He was sitting on the last step of the ship’s lower stair, huddled against the breeze and his eyes tearing up in face of the wind that passed through Terezi, hoping that, by proximity, some kind of miracle would happen to him.

After a while of daydreaming, he felt the shifting of the aura around him, as if someone had pierced through its guise, and his equilibrium was beginning to get crushed by time and circumstance once more.

Terezi turned but their eyes didn’t meet. John couldn’t tell whether she ignored his presence, or whether it was stupid for him to think that a blind person could perceive him through the heavy wind. It hid John and placed him back into the void that he was so used to residing in.

“COM3 ON, J4CK4SS,” Terezi yelled, her hands coned against the air, “W3’R3 L4T3 FOR TH3 P4RTY!”

It reached him with a jolt, and John stood up to follow before recognizing the command.

They settled at an even pace, the balls of their feet sinking into the dry sand. They exchanged glances. John shivered against the cold, hoping for Terezi to suggest they head back to the ship. Maybe he could lead her back, plead for her to consider his needs. But then, what would that accomplish?

Her cane pierced the ground, and, once the soil hardened out, the pace was accompanied by the click of her ashplant. The delegation of absentees kept walking until the ground underneath felt like it pushed back against their feet. They kept walking when the long grass narrowed the vision of their next step, and the tower fell before them.

Terezi leading, John following. Her gait, straight and true. Her scrutiny circumventing the tiniest pebble, and her breath not faltering while John’s tired ba-bumps made it hard for him to keep up.

He stopped to squint at the direction, the tower entrance. It was an arched alcove with a slab, some sort of foot pedestal, leering out from the grass.

“So, uh, what’s the plan when we get in?” he asked, catching a breath. He held his arms against his knees, letting out heavy breaths from the rigorous activity forced through his tired muscles.

Terezi turned, looking at his hunched form. “G33, T4VROS, 1 DON’T KNOW.” Terezi made a steely glance and moved in closer to crouch right in front of his grimaced face. “WHY DON’T YOU 4SK K4RK4T WH4T H3 TH1NKS?”

“Who - ‘phew gosh’ -,” he continued, heaving, “who’s Tavros?”

“JUST SOM3 GUY YOU WOULDN’T KNOW.”

John was about to straighten himself back up, but once his eyes opened to Terezi’s face - up close and personal - he froze in the right-angle position.

“Hah, huff, I mean,” he gave an awkward smile, “what should we tell them about us arriving late?”

“WH4T DO YOU M34N 'US'?” she whispered the last word.

He blushed, avoiding her pupil-less gaze.

“You seemed to be yelling something fierce in the ship.” he retorted, fumbling with his face, revealing that he had just sat there during the process. “I just, you know, should I know what that was about?”

“YOU H4V3 G1RLS 1N YOUR H34D.” she sniffed out a low chuckle.

“What? No, it’s just – what was,” he curtailed the thought, “how do we get inside?”

Terezi reached for his hand, fumbled at the fingers before squeezing a tight grip. She pulled him on the pedestal, and before John could even his posture, a zap propelled them to the twin tralsportalizer up top.


	18. The conceptual, theoretically unsustainable plan

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The team finalize their roles in the up-coming plan

If we were to privy into the swift and extraneous detail of the process of planning and debate the reunited team went over that night, this part of the story would not end in a swift, business-like consensus. Whoever was concerned – the trolls, the humans, or the listener – would not, at the end of the meeting, come out feeling any way different of how absurdly miniscule their chance of success would be.

But there were ground rules of Karkat’s that systematized the different roles each party would have to play in the upcoming tactical event. These were, in no particular order, ones of expedience of the main objective: Terezi and John. Delegation and political insight: Equius and Kanaya. Subterfuge and counterattack: Sollux and Karkat. Finally, the logistical expert of the team, in charge of reconnaissance: Jade.

The motive of each hopefully successful endeavor would be to buy time for Terezi and John, with the help of Jade’s ship, to find, convince and achieve the potential cooperation of the only two successfully god-tier allies they could muster: Vriska and Aradia. Of each, certain communication approaches would have to be relied on.

For Aradia, it would be straight-forward. Persuade her that for the sake of the continuation of a prosperous, unimpeded world of possibility, the ability to “Keep Our Grasp, However Passive It May Be”, on the world the trolls – “We” - collectively created, some measures of time shenanigans would have to be employed. What they would be, due to the numbers of excruciating headaches time shenanigans often traipse along with, would be up to her forward – and backward – knowledge of the current timeline.

“WE’RE TALKING ABOUT SURVIVAL HERE, FOLKS, NOT THE PROSPECTS OF TRANSITIONING INTO ALPHA-TIMELINE ADJACENCY. THAT IDEA HAS SINCE BEEN REVOKED, BECAUSE APPARENTLY “SUCC3SS 1SN’T 4 M3TR1C TH3 M3D1UM US3S TO D3C1D3 WH3TH3R TH3R3’S R3L3V4NCY 1N 1TS V4LU3.” COURTESY OF THE SEER TO MAKE EVERYONE FEEL EVEN MORE WORTHLESS.”

For Vriska, well, let’s just say no one really knew where her allegiance was placed during that current state of affairs. The debacle of picking a fight with the game process – for the sake of sticking it to the Medium – which almost cost them the victory, had left a sour taste in most other teammate’s intake chutes. At least, those who cared enough to, or were politically inclined to voice those opinions out into the void, screaming for her to listen.

No, Vriska operated in a mercantilist sense of a worldview regarding the direction of fate and luck the universe contained: “up for grabs, and necessary to exploit”. Giving her an antagonist – in other words – yet-another final boss to face and gain supremacy over, would be the cup of tea she would probably enjoy the most. Final verdict: exploit the exploiter and have her pull some luck – passively – into the hands of her former comrades.

This was a hotly contested issue during the debate, but everyone agreed, however passive-aggressively, or in Karkat’s case – extremely aggressively – that “we would, e22entiially, need her a2 a fiinal re2ort.”

The delegation would, as a sub-goal, buy time for the subterfuge portion of the operation. While the Condesce would be busy lauding her prognosticated victory over a yet-another race of inferiors during the delegation, the Subterfuge team would attempt to exploit the human resource, as well as the troll-resource to create a menace for the otherwise political machinations the Condesce would more likely prefer in order to bring a world to its knees. Colonialism wouldn’t work, in the short-term, if the entirety of the human race brought up their pitchforks and torches for the sake of dying honorably.

Yes, the humans of the team had an issue with their race’s role acting as cannon fodder, but complete extinction was at stake here, so “The most crimson-b100ded mutates of the conquered world would only e%ceed in true nobility with the swift sacrifice for the cause of their benevolent makers.”

In that same area of rallying the troops, Sollux would work as the Communications Officer for the more individualistic past team members, and how they would go about finding a solution to this plight. The Trolls who stood at the more retired – Tavros - or nomadic – Nepeta – parts of the conscientiousness scale, would have to be reasoned with, if not in a political sense, but a sense of rallying for the end of their “MISERABLE LIVES” kind of manner.

For the semi-reformed ghost descendant-ancestors who somehow managed to bandwagon on their little “experiment’s” victory, Sollux would have to look into how their timeline plasticity could circumvent or add another element of insight into the resource of the seemingly endless supply of deceased Beta-timeliners. For the sake of solidarity, much like the “dancestors”, the deceased could be promised with the bandwagon option of securing a non-essential, yet still comfortable position as citizens of the victory session - Earth E – roll credits and all that jazz.

Sollux’s experiences with the ghosts of murdered selves of him and his friends were far and few between, most of which he had gained from ‘hanging out’ with Aradia. But – and he hoped this would be the case – “fiindiing and gettiing aa back would kiill two beak-bea2t2 wiith one la2er beam.” 

Why and how the ghosts attached themselves into the physical version of existence was trivial, but, with the acquired knowledge of all current party members, it was assumed as the game’s pitiable attempt of possessing some kind of boon for victory – for successfully birthing a new universe, it allowed for the mythos of ghosts to materialize in the wakeful realm.

Right, now that the plan had been set into its conceptual, theoretical motions, the sizzling question of the day remained: what was John’s part in all of this?

For that portion of the planning process, we have to delve out of the team and into the sympathetic, cordial cracking of John’s walls of existential perception. A topic so far sheathed for the sake of exposition. Because, as the titular title character – he is the real reason for the validity of this story concept, and the symbol that makes for the conclusion of this tirade into the deluge of metaphysical analysis. We are but another team of researchers, giving light to new dynamics, new frontiers of exploration that may, in some way or another, be essential in the main canon of the plot. Why would another failed session be so meticulously crafted and self-canonized otherwise? Why would I, Rose, have become, by choice or necessity, the arbiter of yet another instinctual preservation of words and meaning.

Because, for those who like it or not, John’s choice mattered. And the antithesis of mattering should be explored by the endless possibility of canon. The yang to the ying – the good prose versus the bad – and I admit that this in no way achieves the same relevance as the main work: the Alpha timeline. Whereas it explores what not to do in the most convoluted manner possible, and, be it victory or defeat, the tale is best served if we keep that concept in mind.

“YOU WERE RESPONSIBLE FOR MAKING - FOR SOME BULLSHIT ‘UNIVERSE INCESSANTLY TORTURING ME’ REASON - A CHOICE THAT MATTERED AND NOW WE HAVE TO PAY A PRICE FOR IT.“

“Don’t get me wrong – I’d love to go out into space looking for some superhero chicks,” he conceded, “but I’m kind of worthless to be completely honest with you guys.”

They sat, Jade and Karkat, on the shrink upholstery in the grand living-space of Jade’s mansion, next to the fireplace. John placed himself on the piano stool on the other end of the room next to the dining table, ambivalently noodling a few notes while expressing his thoughts.

“If I understand clearly, you’re making it out that I should have pulled us all into the game the trolls had played. But I don’t remember that being my choice in the first place. There was no ‘game’ in the first place, and Dave didn’t even mention it. Then dad came home, and it was my birthday and everything was pretty much hunky-dory. A game called SGRUB wasn’t even released anywhere, and I hardly remember what else I could’ve done to just, ‘ya know, ‘will it into existence’ like you said.”

Jade responded to the inquiry: “Yes, John, there wasn’t an implicit ability for you to take the main path, but, nevertheless, you were part of the two sides of possibility.”

“Right,” he resounded, “So why would I be able to right that wrong if it was deemed to fail in the first place?”

“John, nobody here blames you for what happened,” Jade consoled.

“ACTUALLY, I KIND OF DO. THE REST OF US WERE AT LEAST COMPETENT AT SUCCESSFULLY FAILING,” Karkat interjected.

“Shush,” she placed a firm grip on his knee to postpone the barrage, “you just have to complete the cycle and make sure this expired session reaches the right conclusion for us. The abdication of your role made this world into a windy, chaotic reflection of your inherent aspect, and you alone have a chance of controlling it.”

“How do you know about all of this? What aspect?” he interrupted, turning confusion into discontent.

She looked at him sympathetically, trying to move on and produce the right reaction: “The trolls, remember? They told me about the game – SGRUB - before I learned who they ‘really’ were. It’s the center of this issue, the reason we exist in the first place.”

“What about it then?” he continued to pry.

“The game acts as an unfolding narrative, it takes the metaphysical will of an individual and gives it form, turns it into a universal construct. That ‘will’ is your aspect, John, and that’s why the world around us is so blown out of its true conclusion.”

“But I didn’t ‘will’ anything! I just lived a normal life, Jade. You of all people can attest to that – I’m a nobody!” he accentuated the point by pushing the keys from high note to low note in a slow, depressing tune.

“Your life’s been lax, sure, but that just solidifies that there’s been a dissolution between your body and essence,” she touted off, “and this entire universe rests on the hope that you can mend the two back together, and serve as an end to our narrative.”

“YEAH, PLEASE END OUR MISERABLE EXISTENCE.” Karkat yawned.

“But I’ve never been part of any dang essence, I’ve lived for this long without being able to connect some sort of – what – ‘universal construct’ into my daily breakfast routine. Sheesh, how is that gonna change anything now?” he argued. “Isn’t the game supposed to give me those kinds of powers? Well, tough luck, because I apparently missed that shot 20 years ago without even having a chance in the first place!”

“LISTEN HERE YOU WORTHLESS PIECE OF SHIT:” Karkat stood and pointed at John’s miserable husk, “YOU DON’T GET TO DECIDE OUR FATE BY ACTING LIKE YOUR EXISTENCE IS A PERPETUAL CYCLE OF USELESSNESS. YOU LOST THAT PRIVILEGE ONCE WE MADE YOU INTO BEING. YOU’RE RIGHT ABOUT ONE THING – YOU HAVE NO CHOICE. NOW ITS TIME TO TAKE A SIP OF THE AIR WE PUMPED OUT OF ‘YOUR’ GENETIC FROG STARDUST AND TAKE RESPONSIBILITY. GETTING BACK THE SHIT WE - AND YOU - DESERVE IN THE FIRST PLACE.”

“John,” Jade stood to intervene, “Wouldn’t you be interested in finding out what’s been ultimately missing in your life?”

“My life,” he spun back around to face the instrument, staring down at its black and white keys, “isn’t missing anything.” He spread his hands over the first chords of the black-key melody of Flohwalzer, the foolhardy jokester-song his dad taught him, “It’s that ‘other’ John’s life you’re pulling this out of. And last I checked,” the melody came alive with his delicate press on the keys, “I and he have 20 years between us. Years ‘I’ spent actually making my own life, not some frivolous flights of philosophical buffoonery!” And with a hard smash on the white B and F, the Penta was stymied into a long, excessive death rattle, courtesy of the pedal under his foot.

“WOAH, FUCK,” Karkat clapped after the performance, “I THINK YOU BURST MY FUCKING AUDIAL PLATING WITH THAT ONE.”

He walked up to the dining table, pushed a chair to stand between him and John, and, sitting down with the back of it facing Egbert, Karkat finished by folding his hands on the backrest. Much like a hip pastor would when giving valuable life lessons to his rowdy pupil.

Jade was hot on his tail but was quickly rebuked.

“NO, NO, LET ME GET A FUCKING WORD IN BEFORE YOU PET THIS MISERABLE BARK-BEAST.” He sighed, before leaning into a more somber tone. John looked reticent, but let Karkat’s words into his head, now freed from the slight reprieve he felt after playing out his emotions.

“LOOK, YOU WANT TO BE THE MISUNDERSTOOD LOSER, I GET IT. I’VE BEEN THERE. I AM THE KING OF VERBALLY ASS-FUCKING MY PAST AND FUTURE ALTERNATIVE SELVES, AND YOU WANT TO KNOW A SECRET? HOWEVER MUCH I’VE LOATHED THEM, THEY ALL HAVE ONE THING IN COMMON – THEY’RE ALWAYS FUCKING RIGHT.”

“AND RIGHT NOW, THE ONLY THING SEPARATING THE TWO OF YOU IS THAT THE ‘CURRENT YOU’ THINKS BEING A LOSER IS THE RIGHT FUCKING INSTANCE OF THIS POSSIBILITY OF EXISTENCE. BUT THAT’S THE FURTHEST THING FROM A ‘RIGHT’ FUCKING TAKE.”

“WE’VE JUST GIVEN YOU THE KNOWLEDGE THAT ULTIMATELY SURPASSES THE CASE FOR WHY THIS WORLD BELONGS TO US, THE “ALIENS”. IT WAS NEVER OURS IN THE FIRST PLACE AND WE WERE NEVER SUPPOSED TO LIVE IN THIS SHIT-HEAP. IT’S YOURS, THE CHOICE YOU WERE GIVEN GRANTED YOUR ‘WILL’ “FREE REIGN” HERE AND WE ALL HAVE TO SUFFER FOR IT BECAUSE OF YOUR INCESSANT WHINING - AND YOU DON’T GET TO PULL THAT SHIT IN MY FUCKING PLAN.”

“Geez, Karkat, you’re laying on me thick.” John laughed his pitiful laugh. “Didn’t you say just yesterday that ‘you’ were my ultimate god and creator?”

“YEAH, AND DON’T YOU FUCKING FORGET THAT FACT. I’M YOUR FUCKING GOD, YOU PIECE OF HUMAN TRASH, BUT YOUR PATHETIC SHIT-SPLINTER, MADE FROM YOUR AMBIGUOUS FUCKING THINK-PAN, IS THE FUCKING MISTAKE THAT LET YOU GOVERN THE MATERIAL FUCKING LAWS OF THIS WORLD.” Karkat raged in ignominy.

“So, what you’re saying is…” he caressed the tips of his drooping mustache, “I’m like Jesus?”

“Oh Emmm Geeee - can we, for the love of God, focus?!?” Jade finally retaliated.

Karkat turned to face her. “NO NEED TO DROP CONFESSIONS.” he said.

“Sheeesh, shut up!” she said. Then, looking at John: “You’re gonna do great, we just need your help to find the god-tiers. And you’re really the only one that has a chance at bringing that narrative to unfold ASAP, with your mystical “flow of consciousness” mumbo jumbo, okay? Got it?”

John considered, continuing to massage his face: “Alright, I’m down for a space ride, actually. It sounds really cool!” he smiled at Jade, letting her smile back in contentedness.

After a brief silence, Karkat slapped the entirety of his palm against his dull face.

“THAT’S ALL IT FUCKING TOOK??”


	19. Manning the guns

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The team is awakened for their day of reckoning.

We need a primal release - the tension’s been pulled over our heads like late-stage capitalism. The readers have been the equivalent of sitting down at the rail of a starlit balcony. The plot demands - it boot-kicks us off the edge with a pair of plastic bags. We fly out of the chopper flailing, and you know that puppy’s blasting Unfortunate Son.

You look away for a second, and *WHAM* your boy’s face-offing the fake Chekov’s mantelpiece, slipping on a red herring during the gala robbery, but then *SHAM*, it was narration all along and the crucial moment happened off-scene - the herring was the true diamond all along.

What we’re making here, folks, is the plan going into action. And our prose needs quick witty analogisms that strike tension like a bullet through the nuzzle in slow motion. The phantasmal force of trajectory, like its own afterimage shooting through the air as the zoom rotates around its circumference. The bullet gyroscopically stabilizes in the frame and the background spins in vertigo. Then the tears, the heartfelt, adrenaline pumped whip of sweat-drenched hair. Enough blood to fill every crack of the white marble floor.

The type of momentum to keep you leaning out the edge of your seat, perpetually flexing your toes for the chance of feeling that same release, to pop that human-shaped watermelon.

While the plot twists inward, it leaves us the external fools, writhing to its whim, fooling ourselves by bargaining with our suspension of disbelief, giving away our undeserved trust for a free toss at the ego-shattering puzzle-work, just to feel like we deserve being outwitted by movie-magic. That’s showbiz, baby.

We quick pan to the IT set-up, its sleek edges glowing green like fucking Christmas lights. Sollux orchestrating the code, straining his police siren irises, steam-rolling his vessels; honey pumping temples. The tips of his piston fingers, keys sizzling under friction. The single bead of sweat on his forehead dripping tentatively into the coffee cup and splashing with a loud echoed *POP*. Taking a sip, then chugging the whole thing. All liquids becoming one. The sickest metaphor of blood sweat and tears of any pro hacker’s life – any mineral squeezed out like coal pressed into a diamond. That bead of sweat garnished by gold leaf for how filled with pure, distilled skill it was.

“2he’2 moviing. kk, wake the fuck up.” Sollux sounded the alarm. A red dot shimmered light through his screen.

“WHO, WHAT.” Karkat leaned out of a bean bag, half asleep in the fetal position. A second lasted and Sollux plopped him on the floor with a whip of his psiionics. Karkat’s body slumped, then tensed up once he got his bearings straight.

“WE’RE FLYING OFF THE FUCKING HANDLE, IT’S DO OR DIE. DAY THREE BEGINS NOW YOU FUCKOS.”

“44444UUUGH,” Terezi mumbled deep within the overgrown side garden, “4LR1GHT, 1M UP.”

“AT EASE, EQUIUS, GET THOSE GUNS TO THE SHIP.” Karkat’s strategic walkthrough of the Harley house dispatched the plan. Equius, standing still at the front of the garden room gave a salute and trotted to Jade’s room.

The evening swelled into a cacophonous murmur of semi-formed wakefulness. The trolls tiredly coalesced from their day-slumber. The humans ascended from other parts of the mansion.

“Sheesh, finally! It was getting stuffy in here.” Jade rushed and threw herself outside to get Lady ready.

Equius toweled off in the main cylinder, moving bits and pieces of Jade’s functionally re-purposed firearms made in his own design. The transportalizer groaned at the weight of his lead frame before zapping down to the ship.

Lady’s thunderous engines toggled down at the foot of the lab under Jade’s careful parking. She readied the hatch open, giving him the go. Kanaya, holding breath to yawn through the hours of the sleep-less planning, reached out to pick up the guns and order them inside.

The chain of menial work zoomed back to the main command. Karkat cracked his knuckles, waving for Sollux to detach from his digital augments and move for the transport. Then, he went to look for John, who was, for obvious reasons, too busy to have the narrative attach to his perspective. Nevertheless, Karkat found him at the piano.

“EGBERT, WHAT THE FUCK?”

“Heeey, listen,” John said, slurring his words, “I’ve almost got the ghost buster’s theme worked out.”

“HOLY SHIT, ARE YOU HUMAN FUCKING DRUNK?” Karkat said, muscling through the disorderly room of chairs and embalmed beasts of the hunt.

“H3H3H3H3H3,” Terezi revealed herself from across the dining table, appreciating John’s performance, “H3S PR3TTY GOOD.”

“GET IN THE SHIP HOLY FUCK WE DON’T HAVE TIME FOR THIS. THE CONDESCE IS COMING DOWN.” he bellowed.

“CAN HE FUNCTION?”

“I’m alright,” John muttered, peeling off the stool and stumbling over his feet. He was leering, a glass jug with a crystal spout retrieved in his hands.

“1LL T4K3 C4R3 OF H1M.” Terezi chittered, pulling him up by his frayed shirt collar and sliding the jug from his hand to hers.

With that, they took to the ship, stumbling, John positively hammered and Karkat rumbling deep within, exuding anxiety for all.

“Get in losers, we’re going shopping!” Jade honked through the cockpit.

Karkat on one side, Terezi on the other, the threesome lumbered up to man their positions, pushing to the cockpit to strap John in. The hatch closed behind them, and Lady purred her anticipatory rumble. Karkat stayed in the brig and slumped down next to Sollux with a large sigh. In the shadow, the umber-colored troll patted his thick fray of hair, looking bored. Kanaya sat on the opposite end with Equius, assessing which lipstick to wear before choosing not to, instead, using it as a fumble to keep herself composed. Equius sat on his cask of guns, crossing his own above his chest. Terezi and John joined Jade above the deck. The new trio would take to the stars that day, and for the sake of their friends, hopefully, cease the pressure they were all met with.


	20. Far away in distant lands

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The team splits up. Their tasks begin to unfold.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If we reach 413 hits by the end of this story, my job will have been completed.

Kanaya and Equius egressed first. Their steps echoed above the half-submerged city that once was. A stockpile of decades-old architecture, shattered glass skyscrapers jutting out of pools of stagnant salt-water. On the precipice of a mighty ship, a carrier – neo-colonial space city, they were faced with leering frames of red tentacle protrusions and shapeless entree ways deep within the heated beast. The Sea-witch’s lair neared closer with each step. The landing deck carried them on a red carpet of sun-warmed metal tiles. Lines upon lines of her floating guards looked down at the pair like vultures.

Elsewhere, Lady was no more than a speck in the sky, leaving without confrontation.

The Condesce was expecting them, and time slowed down for the two expatriated trolls. 

* * *

Karkat and Sollux landed next. On the outskirts of a desert world, a water-less southern mix of heat and steel – a still, scorching world of industry and wrought iron living. The people here were many, of all colors and tones, blanketed by white fashions to keep from the evening swell.

Jade let them exit in a quiet side-alley, cloaked by the shadows of corporate sky-high venues that framed the center of the city like hierarchical symbols - ladders to success.

After a few passing moments, Karkat motioned for the ship to retreat while the coast was still clear, which Jade did promptly.

A bell from seemingly everywhere sounded off and the streets tore into hurried escapes. In quick increments, the city went silent. The whispers of worried men and women left grim remarks on the new order of things: of frightened and sleepless nights, the ‘unknown’ finally catching up to them - terrifying space neighbors coming to cleanse a failed world.

“Sup.” A figure sauntered from behind a dumpster. They were wearing a white suit, a color-coded fashion contrast against most formal wear – or was it because of the heat. It was a man. A man behind a pair of aviators.

“Nice shades.” He said, putting out a hand to greet Sollux, then sliding both in his trouser pockets.

“Were you waiitiing behiind that dump2ter the entiire tiime?” Sollux’s nasal voice questioned the newcomer.

“Nah, I mean, yeah – was the dumpster obscuring my presence? Yes,” he pondered, “but is there any meaningful connection between me and it? Well, let’s just say we’re on a need to know basis and the dumpster got the short end of the stick.”

“That’2 karkat, we’re here two 2ave the world.” Sollux introduced the two, “Karkat, thii2 ii2 dave – he’2 our iinformant.”

“GREAT, YOU’RE PROMOTED TO NEW JACKASS HUMAN AFFILIATE. OUR LAST ONE FUCKING SUCKS.”

“Tight.” Dave reacted, signing the trolls to follow him. “So, uh, Earth. Welcome to it.”

“THANKS, I HATE IT. WHAT’S THAT RINGING SOUND?”

“Curfew,” Dave said.

Karkat slowed to a half-step, leaning into Sollux’s left ear. “WHERE DID YOU PICK UP THIS ILL FASHIONED STRAY?” he whispered.

Sollux mirrored the movement. “None of the2e are on me. ii’m beiing u2ed liike a 2econd-hand hand puppet and my a22 ii2 a communal dii2h towel.”

“SO WHO THE HELL ARE WE FOLLOWING?”

Sollux shrugged. “Jade forced Egbert on me. next – our ‘friiend’ iinviite2 thii2 diipa22 iin my dm’2.”

“WHICH FUCKING FRIEND,” Karkat said less than silently.

Sollux retrieved an odd-looking wire-manacled device and pointed its screen at Karkat.

“YOU’VE GOT TO BE FUCKING KIDDING ME. I’M GOING TO KILL THAT BASTARD.”

A few feet ahead, Dave let out a smirk.

* * *

Elsewhere, on the precipice of the outer atmospheric region, the climactic trio entered the cold reaches of space.

“John, buddy, how you feeling?” Jade said, concernedly. She kept her eyes on the course, pulling Lady to a slower commute after escaping Earth’s pull.

“H3’S F1N3. B3TT3R, 3V3N.” Terezi touted off from way back in the cockpit.

“Haaah, you’d think the skin would peel back.” John let a cloud of window-condensing fumes escape his lips. He was laying on the cold metal tiles with Terezi leaning over him with her characteristic grin. The glass jug rolled empty on his stomach.

With the silence of vacuum reached, the inner spacecraft began bobbing from the inertia of zero gravity. The jug came loose, flying up and bouncing lazily against ceiling panels. John reached out to fetch it but let himself be whisked away from the propulsion levied by his extended arm. Terezi floated alongside him, keeping his appendages levelled. Jade was strapped and followed course without intrusion.

“You guys holding up there?” she said.

“Holding up: good one, Jade.” John’s reddened cheeks flexed in a smile.

“I’m gonna need your help here. We’re out short of a space compass.”

John’s weightless form began barrel-rolling towards the front. Terezi chuckled, spinning John along his center mass.

“Focus! We don’t have time to dilly-dally, you fuckos!” Jade yelled in a commanding tone. Terezi and John floated with unearned conviction.

So…

WH4T

I can’t exactly come up with a plan I know nothing about, can I?

DUMP TH3 S4RC4SM, ROS3. JUST WR1TE 4 W4Y W3 C4N F1ND VR1SKA.

If only it were that simple, but, as I recall being previously told off on, I can’t exactly ‘will’ the actions of people. Let alone a god-tier with mind-altering powers.

OMG, HOW 4BOUT LOOK1NG 4T 1T TH1S W4Y: WH3RE WOULD YOU PUT 4 M3L4NCHOL1C S3LF-OBS3SS3D GOD P4RTLY R3SPONS1BL3 FOR FORM1NG TH1S R34L1TY?

That’s kind of obvious, don’t you think? I feel like I’d be at least a little bit coyer about this story-beat.

C4N TH3 M3T4F1CT1ON – JUST BR1NG US TH3R3. H3R3, 1’LL H3LP:

“H3Y, P1LOT CH1CK.” Terezi took John’s hand, using it as a pointer. She swayed towards a cluster of stars in their periphery. “G1V3 OR T4K3 4BOUT 5500 L1GHT Y34RS TH4T D1R3CT1ON.”

Not even playing it sly with the machinations, are we?

“H4H4H4H.” Terezi laughed, John, filling in with his hee’s and hoo’s.

Jade shrugged. “Party bus heading to Scorpius, I guess.” She pulled the throttle and off they went.


	21. Second coming: histeri-yo

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Something dark is conceived within the Space Queen's ship. Its intrepid inhabitants are on high alert.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CONTENT WARNINGS:
> 
> For this chapter especially - detailed gore and Guy Fieri.
> 
> Author's note: As of writing this, we've reached 413 hits. If anyone asked me how far this little project was gonna go, I'd be thoroughly and utterly surprised. Yet here we are, and I am still as baffled as I'd ever be. Thank you all, I love you and this little corner of the internet has grown into a child I'm proud to call mine.

The Patron-saint of Flavour-town worked ardently within the lair of Her Imperious Condensation. The tips of his stalagmite hairs glistened in the lasciviously rendered royal pink of the ship’s food-dispensary monitors. The room looked like a recently haphazardly reinvented makeshift butcher shop. Guy Fieri’s opaque neon-sheen Oakleys reflected the light into burning pink flames. Better yet, his grin resembled the skull of Ghost Rider - bleached pink.

The fumes of his blazing kitchen sautéed the inner room into a rendered, mouth-watering grease-fire. He infantilized his ingredients like pawns in a game of food chess. Drones of meat flesh glistened underneath his butcher hands, a stack of unidentified parts of organic vertebrates. A garbage pile of deep-fried insectoids dribbled around the workstation as Fieri prodded a drum solo with a hacksaw and a butcher blade. His big meaty fists were covered in a mush of blood and fat.

The cook’s two goons stood on either side of the room posing menacingly at a large entrance hatch. Their face-paint obscured the deeply saturated mix of mirth and menace hiding behind still eyes. The ICP stood hands folded, mouthing off about the miracle of Guy’s hellish flesh-parade.

“The beast hungeeers, my motherfuckers.” Guy Fieri announced, undoing the third button from his Hawaiian shirt. The ICP saluted in praise and animalistic gutters.

He clasped both tools into a fist and hung them on the wall. Then, the tv-restaurateur turned to a series of monitors behind them. Splattering the keyboard with his stock of oily fluids, Guy Fieri entered a command, and parts of the rendered flesh on his workstation turned into a bland slurry of green ectoplasmic goo.

“Preach, preach on with the best of your chops, brothers. We’re in the Flavour zone now, under the saucy wing of the Shrimp-Queen and the Grand High blood. Let’s make delicious miracles happen. There’s a reason why space tastes like burnt steak, motherfuckers. We’ll roast this world in Donkey sauce and make room…

…for some alien sizzle.”

One of the two ICP goons ran to a separate monitor and reached out for a comedically large lab switch. The second pulled out a mic from his overstuffed hoodie and began blasting raps like parodying a sermon.

We’re in a thriller of miracles,

The best of our libidinous

Slide (yeah, yeah, yeah)

In the antichrist of pwnage

Our body is the motherfucking sewage

It flows (yeah, yeah, yeah)

In the blood of our savior,

The clown prince of mirth and histeri- yo.

Truly, it was never known where the cult of the Son of Bards originated from. Many scholars of the time took great care in 'anthropologizing' the 'theologistics' of the ancient cult. Most ascribed it within the realm of Dionysus, or Bacchus of the old pagan virtues before the Roman appropriation. Many still believed in the worthwhileness of reading through the lyrics of worshippers for more clues, for an inkling of the ancient philosophies that drove its hedonist virtues.

Of miracles, it was said, the cult maintained a strictly oral transmission of knowledge, and its roots were seen everywhere around the world. The hardcore Juggalos, the entropized, far-gone stoners of the world. The gristle-bugs of a world of gluttons. The reverence of these cholerics - choleric clerics - has yet still been a mystery for most save for the few exceptions. Guy Fieri and the ICP, however, were exactly those exceptions.

Having proven themselves in the ritual rites received from the brain-blasts of the Condesce’s divination, the posse firmly believed in the resurrection of their High blood prince. In fact, more than believed, they were specifically instructed to perform unspeakable procedures on their own species to sanctify the miracle of the return of their space brother. And that was exactly what they were doing now.

Let’s carry on.

The switch set off sparks of blue and red circulatory veins that ran up throughout the interface. With the workspace ready, its cumulative charge sent thumps of a sustained force of shock-waves, initiating a pulse that emanated through the green sludge and mass of carcasses. The green ectoplasm began convulsing and radiating a faint glow that mixed in with the pink of the room. The posse went silent, basking in the ritualistic sludge fountain of their master’s resurrection.

“We breathe the fire of this world, motherfuckers. The grand intestine of the universe – the hardest working organ. We are the powerful, we are the merciful, we are the magnificent dumpster babies of miracles to come.”

The goo swelled and sprung out like a malformed egg. Its membrane shell started to rip and tear, two phallic horns protruded and pierced through the top with a ridiculous amount of force and motion. A muffled scream was heard from the inside.

“HOOOOOOONK-k-k-k-k-k” the sludge compressed like it was letting out the air from a balloon. Its clear timbre broke through the walls of the spacecraft and its dungeon-dwelling inhabitants. It broke through the layers of the wired organic ship-intestines into a frightened world. The return of the bard meant the disillusion of anything just and noble. His second coming would not be like the first. It was calculated, condensed to the most basic of clinical aspects – a truly immoral process – a monster fuelled by the sick ritual of flesh, blood, and rhyme.

The bard of rage:

ASCEND.

* * *

Elsewhere, within the ship, the dissipating echoes of the grand Honk, as it would be called if there were witnesses to bear its magnitude, reached the ears of two unsuspecting trolls.

“Did You Hear Something?” Kanaya inquired in a hushed tone.

“Yes.” Equius answered, seemingly relieved. Two straps of firearms were nestled within the pits of his arms. “We are experiencing the true testament of Her power. That is no mere honk. It’s a wriggling rattle of a high-bl00d.” he said, as if saying that made anything clearer.

“Birth – Did She Stove Away A New Mother Grub? I Always Assumed Her Plans To Re-Populate This World Would Be Conceived Through Cloning Instead Of Establishing New Brood Caverns.”

“No, this is a despicable afront to Troll-dom. There is nothing natural about that honk.” he sneered. The sweat of his scrutiny propelled a rifle out of his underarm. He reached out to catch it but, having underestimated the force of the grab, propelled the gun through the hallway. It crashed, smashed and clattered with the cringe-inducing silence that followed.

“That’s Four.” Kanaya counted.

Something stirred from a room nearby. Its interior emanated a hue of reds and blues, and a low moan escaped into the hallway. Kanaya and Equius looked at one another, nodded, and proceeded to sneak forward. The blueblood retrieved a replacement firearm of the one he had smashed. The stock of them strapped to his backpack was becoming lighter by the second. Kanaya had her lipstick at the ready. The beast rumbled in roars of machinery and organics throughout, yet the Condesce was still hidden within its depths.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh yeah, he's fucking back, baby. Welcome to the Carnival.


	22. The cosmic abyss

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A cosmic journey turns into reflection.

“SO, HOW F4ST C4N TH1S TH1NG GO?”

After a long silence held amongst them, the blind explorer broke the trio’s equitable slow cruise through its tour of the vast emptiness.

“You know, I don’t actually know. Fast, I guess -” Jade monotoned, yawning through her response, “really fast.”

“TH1S 1S SO BOR1NG, WHY 1S NOTH1NG H4PP3N1NG?”

Are you asking me? What did you expect, a quick hop to the convenience store? It’s thousands of light-years away, find a black hole or something, I don’t know.

“Walk around the deck for a while, you’ll feel more productive.” Jade snarked, not concerning herself with the conversation.

“Can you keep it down, please? I swear I think I might have a concussion.” John moaned from the downstairs brig.

Terezi rolled her eyes, floating through the air wistfully. “4RE3 W3 R34LLY GONN4 SP3ND D4YS DO1NG NOTH1NG?” she intoned to no one in particular.

John’s not going to sleep anytime soon. How about we just spend his current waking consciousness talking about your lucrative plan. You know, spit-ball a little, think about your social drives of concupiscence and the universe’s perverted derision of its importance in the relevancy of one’s thematic lifecycle.

“OH MY GOD SHUT THE FUCK UP,” Terezi yelled like a lunatic, talking to no one.

“Don’t be mean!” Jade brought out a commanding tone, “You made him drunk, the least you could do is be civil about it.”

“UUUUGH.” The troll resigned, squirming annoyedly in her process to find a comfortable position to float in.

Okay, be like that, I’ll have fun without you.

* * *

Let’s discuss the story so far. Where we are and what the point of stretching this chapter through an unabstracted de-clutter of stimuli surmounts to.

The archetype of a long journey through vast stretches of land – and space – is a common trope of character development. It’s sort of like shaking up a carbonated bottle-neck, putting pressure on heroes to adapt to the volatility of urgency in order to manage their change in a decisive manner, one that’s constructed to level out their abstractions; nudging the spout just enough for it to increase tension and discomfort until a worthy climax is established. By closing the door, temporarily, on the actionability of the protagonist’s set objective, it juxtaposes the perpetuous nature of narrative progression. The comparison of will and its absence is the revelation: the contrast of one’s zone of influence when it’s torn from their familiarized grasps, ironically, creates a short-cut that leads to the clearer picture.

Yes, the irony is part of the symbolism. What is irony if not the temporary increase of tension in order to bring a more deserved revelation? A journey is an enterprise fulfilled by meaning. By taking the meaning out and replacing it with isolation and torment, we are exposed to a sense of unease that complies with a character’s lack of growth, making the journey the real detriment to the time-sensitive cruciality of the moment.

But an extended period of stasis, again, ironically, becomes a short-cut due to the helplessness exposited on the protagonist – it becomes an obsession until its lesson is complete – no abstractions, no side-tracks, no candy. A helpless journey is a boon, not a detriment. It choreographs the detachment from urgency and ‘action’ and creates a space for contemplation and sentiments of purpose even if that purpose is stalled in the meantime. A purpose can’t exist without tension, and therefore, tension is what creates meaning.

The concept of skipping through large periods of a character’s timeframe can seem useful at first, even pertinent for the story to progress without unnecessary stages drowning out the main plot. But, in doing so, there is a missed opportunity on weighing the cumulative build-up of a character’s motivation to reach that goal while still having to lead through a life of pointless derision. A skill is not gained without hours of repetition, neither is a climax worthwhile if the protagonist is only seen during the parts of the highest importance.

By putting a time-bomb on the narrative perspective of the story, we miss the old days of John’s characteristic growth. He has been relegated as a symbol for abstraction, a McGuffin of sorts, but we forget to look at him as a conscious being made to serve as the purposeful heart of the story. For better or for worse, John is changing in a way that demands closure. We sympathize with his experience - of seeing people die; we find more emotion than the deaths of those fallen in the first place. He is our eyes, our looking glass through a world that we can’t rightfully live through ourselves.

Without the main protagonist to move the emotional part of the journey, we move away from growth and move into a set of bullet-points to manufacture forward progress. We are left with a slice of appetizing meat but no one to eat it - to give perspective on the taste, the saturation – how chewy it is or how the seasoning compliments the unfurled proteins of its new bonds. Without an active observer, the meat begins to wither and rot with no one to appreciate its complex recipe.

So, our perspective glance rallies back to a familiar phase. The beginning, really. John, having lost all sense of location, nurses a hangover at the waste dispensary access point of the ship’s brig. Now, as we call back to moments past, the struggle of our story seems as unreachable as it was the day it began – the day I came to tell its tale; a baby born from an old clown and Gamzee Makara.

* * *

John Egbert sat uninterrupted and frustrated from decisions he had now come to regret. His frustration crept way beyond the struggles of the body, into the metaphysical state of John's own thoughts, wherein a battle of three conjoined dilemmas crept over their host's attention.

The first, conveniently the more physical one, was settled in the painstaking headache of a night fuelled by a lot of, oh, far too much liquor of a highly intoxicating content. The breath of an empty world encroached on his senses. Unlike Jade, space was never something John could fully appreciate. But its unrestricted form hid a process that made life into being, and that centered on a single, thumping, hurting and abused mind. The universe was a womb, and its stars were the seedling spermatozoa that grew life within. The eggs, the tadpole, the polliwog, froglet, universe, existence, possibility, meaning, purpose, motivation, character. Everything has a beginning, and everything must come to a conclusion. His hangover would stifle, yes, but for a man so self-destructive, his tendency to will out the will that controls the fabric of this universe is nothing if not reasonable. The burden of such a task, even if unconscious, never wains nor falters, and is masked only slightly by the obstruction of senses – pain being one of them.

The second, a bit more abstract but nevertheless weighing a much heavier loss than that of the nature of a mind wrought with pained contradiction and uncertainty, was the responsibility set upon his doubtful conscience. For what it was worth, the trifling hope that his metaphysical actions could in any way be used willingly was the only thing keeping John together during the alcohol-less pity party of a death-box full of self-determined girls. Unfortunately, this responsibility released his object permanence from the continuous liquor medication, and the team he left behind on earth had returned in the form of a judgemental cricket strumming at his temples. “They’re banking on your success. A success that you can’t achieve.” The singsong chitters told him.

The third venture traversing John’s vapid brain-scape was notably the real mastermind behind his frustration.

…It’s me. I’m so sorry, John. I’m causing all of this, please forgive me. I can’t bear to imagine how much you’re suffering. I’ll figure this out, I promise. I’m the only one who can, and, and…

With a flash of a blink, time ceased to function. An iridescent trail of burgundy sparkles encased Lady in a smog of space-dust. Terezi floated in frozen stillness, Jade’s wide jaw was creaked in an open yawn, and John’s slumped form looked like a cornered prey, hiding ever so still.

The eggs, the tadpole, the polliwog, froglet, universe, existence, possibility, meaning, purpose, motivation, character were frozen still – their process halted to the whims of a curious fairy.


	23. A meeting

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Karkat and Sollux follow Dave to a meeting with his business partner.

The ground trio followed along a straight boulevard through the empty night curfew. Their footsteps echoed against the asphalt. Dave and Sollux walked side-by-side, wherein the human man proceeded to verbally guide the troll through his home city.

Karkat sulked from behind, interrupting their conversation.

“SO, WHAT PARTICULAR FUCKING EPIPHANY DID YOUR SHALLOW HUMAN SKULLET PERCEIVE IN ORDER TO TAKE PART IN THIS DESTITUTE ORGANIZATION OF DUMBFUCKS YOU’RE NOW TASKED TO ESCORT?”

“Your friend makes a good point,” Dave propositioned to Sollux, “what with all the shit that’s happened so far.”

He then turned his form to Karkat, walking backward. “I’m part of a certain set of - I guess you could say – interested parties,” Dave said, gesticulating.

“OKAY FUCKER CUT WITH THE BULLSHIT ARE YOU HERE TO HELP US OR NOT,” Karkat questioned.

Sollux shrugged at either one or both of them, having expected the conversation to come up eventually.

Dave raised an eyebrow. “I’m looking at the bigger picture here, my dude. Thinking outside of the frame.” He traced a rectangle in the air, then, smoothed out his suit. “I’m a businessman, and hooo boy is my partner just the caviar lickyest motherfucker out there. So, we’re here to propose a business.” he relayed.

Dave stopped at the foot of a tall sky-rise building made entirely out of glass. The streetlights magnified in the reflections of countless windows. The door opened for them automatically.

“And by here, I mean - please follow me into this extremely phallic skyscraper so we can start our meeting,” he said, putting a hand out to lead them through.

“WHAT THE FUCK KIND OF BUSINESS?” Karkat bellowed, moving through the doorframe first.

Sollux followed the motions, and Dave made up the tail of the parade. They entered a small lobby and continued the conversation while waiting for an elevator to come down.

“Yeah, you’re right, I just threw up a little. Not business, more like – the future of the human race.” he smiled, expecting the questioning glances that followed.

“AND, AGAIN, I REITERATE – WHAT THE FUCK KIND OF FUTURE?” Karkat repeated in the same judgmental tone.

“work2 for me, kk. a2 long a2 the two of you don’t 2tart deliiberatiing moral quandriie2.” Sollux rolled his pupilless eyes.

The elevator doors opened; Dave nodded at a camera set in the ceiling of the small metal death-box. Once the trolls were settled in, he pressed a button for the top floor. A small jingle began playing in the background.

“Look, you guys look like a swell pack of proselytizing revolutionaries and I can respect that. Really, I do.” Dave continued. He tapped his foot in the rhythm of the music.

His face turned wanting for a second, and his head went up to stare at the ceiling. Not at it, specifically, but through it and what lied beneath. “But there’s been a sort of lack of vigor in the voices of the people around these parts. The human race – it’s sad to say – has lost some of its more “canine” qualities.”

“YEAH, BUT YOU’VE ALWAYS BEEN FUCKING IMBECILLIC.” Karkat pitched in, his voice a sharp contrast to the smooth melody of the elevator music.

“I’ve read your file, Karkat. It’s kind of funny you’d think that.” Dave flipped an imaginary page of files he apparently had on the troll.

“FOR YOUR INFORMATION I FIND A LOT OF THINGS FUCKING FUNNY…” Karkat retorted, keeping a dramatic pause in between his next sentence.

“LIKE YOU, FOR INSTANCE, AND YOUR SMARMY SHIT-EATING KNOW-IT-ALL ATTITUDE.”

“Based, I like it. But also, no. It’s easy to assume an eye-roll stance when you’re watching a bunch of humans - who don’t know what the fuck they’re doing - recycle the same grudge through centuries of warfare.”

The elevator moved swiftly, driving past floors of unknown compositions. The music felt muffled by the counterweight passing at the midpoint.

“And, well, yeah, we never really came to a conclusion? Like, just found ways to bury the lead.” Dave said solemnly.

His mood turned back to its stalwart beginnings, and his sunglassed glare switched directly to Karkat.

“But you’re a smart cookie, Karkat, and you know what it’s really been about.”

“I DON’T NEED YOU TO FUCKING PATRONIZE ME, I WAS THERE WHEN YOU FELL OUT OF THE TREE.” he stumped against the statement.

“Tell me, then,” Dave said, amusingly.

“FUCK YOU, WHAT DO YOU WANT ME TO SAY? GREED, ENVY? YOU THINK YOU’RE SO SPECIAL - THE TROLLS INVENTED THAT FUCKING SHIT, WE’RE LIGHTYEARS AHEAD OF YOUR CRUMBLING AUTOCRACY, AND THE SHIT YOU CALL OPRESSING NOW IS GRUB BATTER AGAINST THE REIGN OF TERROR THE CONDESCE IS ABOUT TO UNLEASH ON YOU.”

Dave chuckled.

“Couldn’t have said it better myself,” he said.

“But yeah, it’s the enfranchisement of conceptualization that really got us. The abstraction of what was plain right before us. Doubletalk and doublespeak, insincerity for the sake of one-upmanship. Greed, yes, but also – stubbornness.” Dave added.

“YEAH, AND?” Karkat countered.

“And I’m here to change that for good,” he said, monotoning.

The elevator began decreasing in speed. The music finally felt right with the deceleration of the machine. After a short pause, the silence was broken.

“BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAH. OKAY, THAT ALMOST GOT ME. DO YOU REALLY THINK THERE’S A FUTURE FOR SOMEONE LIKE YOU? YOU’LL WAKE UP TOMORROW STAKED TO A STREET LANTERN WITH THE REST OF YOUR RACE, AND THE FEW REMAINING WILL THANK THEIR FUCKING STARS WE CAME IN TO FACILITATE THEIR USEFULNESS.”

Dave waited patiently; his facial expressions not changed. Once the elevator doors were just about to open, he parted his lips.

“Not quite.”

The image before them created a full spectrum of reactions. On the other end of a rich wooden desk sat a familiar face. Of the three arriving parties, Sollux’s brows furrowed the lowest, followed, only slightly behind, by Karkat. Dave’s remained perfectly linear.

“wwell, wwell, wwell,” the man at the desk prattled his fingers symmetrically against one-another.

“FUCKING,” was the first word covering the last “wwell” of the man’s labored accent, “YOU.” was the second.

Simultaneously, Sollux’s glasses cracked as his psiionics burst around the empty air surrounding them.

“tiime two diie, tuna breath.” his lisped threat echoed through the room with added enhancement.

Barely any time had passed, and the well-dressed man had not yet finished his diatribe.

“wwhat do wwe-“ he started, getting swiftly cut off at the end.

The psiionic blast lifted the seated man’s form in the air, pushing his head against the tall ceiling. Before them, the full image of a perfectly chiseled metrosexually-colored purple business-like well-suit-fitted burgundy-shoed smarmy looking asshole was revealed in all its beauty.

“Woah, woah, woah - calm down everybody,” Dave said to no avail.

The revolutionary duo was now faced with the business duo in full western fashion.


	24. Looking back

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John has a memorable walk with an ascended fairy girl.

What, you ask yourself, would be the continuing perspective our eyes came subject to in this escalating progression of events? Unfolding before you come the trinity of plots running through the scope of Egbert of Earth E – a phrase I coined just now out of necessity, not alliteration.

The space trio, the ground trio, and the ship… duo. Well, not like there’s enough characters to follow, we’re only limited to what the story can give. Still, you’d think the duo left on quite a cliffhanger. Well, actually, cliffhangers have been on the rise like generously sprinkled seasoning. The taste lasts at the back of your throat with a secondary pallet hiding in the folds of flavoring.

Ah, if only the choice were interactive in that way – the ability to choreograph a set of events occurring in the vicinity of one time by individual decision – to give agency to an otherwise gloomy turn of interactions our heroes have come to face. But we’re used to that here. I’d hope so, at least.

Anyways, this was all horseshit by the by. The narrative is strictly congenial with our main protagonist, and, I mean – I have no way to break the given set of circumstances dealing with John’s wakeful state having full reign on what my vision deems to delve into. His is mine and I am him – and so we walk back to the proverbial fairy and her flight of plotting peripherations. She can keep them frozen only for so long – Lady isn’t the most interesting conversationalist.

“What’s happening?” John intervened, having lost all sense of direction and mobility. His form being skyrocketed through the vacuum of space, a bubble grazing its membrane against the cold life-less expanse without which his vitals would surely collapse.

No answer.

The bubble pulsed with every flutter of Aradia’s wings. She moved through the directionless space with purposeful insight, holding John by the width of his chest. A bright vision unblurred in his perspective, he sensed a searing crack in the sky – a vision, perhaps – a world without form, outside of the metrics of the now, in hindsight, the easily measurable expanse of the known universe.

No, this was different. This - whatever this was - wasn’t constrained by the four-dimensional structure he was used to, where time and space ground its inhabitants into a tumult of reality. This was unexplainable and unperceivable by the bent light that glued John’s sight together.

And, with that same insight, the word ‘Aradia’ was recognized without any introduction. She was as much a part of the bright crack in/through/above space as the unperceivable world they were moving towards. The crack grew, or did it? It just was, and it’s being, having gestated in John’s mind for long enough, finally became part of him and his senses of perception, in one blurred white light. Before he knew it, he was brought down to a grassy yard in a suburban neighborhood, his sight slowly adjusting to the calm beige colors of green, white and blue.

“This is… my home?” He said, swelling up from the hacky-sack nature of his body being thrown about in precarious positions. Aradia slowly glided down to the mowed lawn, still floating.

“Oh, is that what this is?” she bemused. “I guess you’re right then, welcome to your home!”

She went back up, floating about the neatly painted balconies of surrounding house blocks, admiring the sun-warmed greenery of the well-kept neighborhood.

Not wanting to disturb his miracle of “apparating” back home, John did the same – sincerely – he did.

Yes, what with the increasing preponderance of death and conscious manipulation, one, even one as dull in such concepts as John, would notably consider himself in heaven. Or, at the very least, trapped in a limbo of his own mind. Who was the fairy, why had she taken him back – questions he would surely find answers to progressively soon? So, why not have a little him-time for the time being.

His old swing set was here, the pogo ride, oh my, was that a sight to behold. The incongruity did not fly past him. They all looked new, the amicably preserved suburbia was, well, it was just like he pictured, and that didn’t settle well by him. John had the tenacity to look back in the past when considering his home, and this was just it, it was the past. And through that laborious chain of thoughts, his travel through time became clear to him.

At this point, Aradia hovered back down, having seen whatever there was to the town and followed John’s sightline instead. She inspected the pogo ride, scrutinizing its exceptionally powerful springs. She gave a giggle, noting the ominous stare it gave off, the unreadable smile of its gelatinous form, and the scene surrounding them in its entirety. She seemed naturally curious of the deadly machine.

“Be careful with that, it’s exceptionally deadly,” John said with an almost automatic concern.

“In this form, perhaps. There’ve been times when it’s definitely claimed some lives - in one form or another.” Aradia snickered, reminiscing.

John remained silent to his own concerns. Opening a can of worms with yet another question he didn’t want to be answered came with a burden he couldn’t escape. ‘Couldn’t’ was sort of his gimmick in this particular version he had recently become.

Aradia came to John’s level.

“I am so excited right now.” she gleamed. “It’s not every day you get to prod around and dissect a demiurge version of one of your friends.”

“We’re friends?” John asked, stripping the statement from the bits he didn’t understand.

“I’d like to think so! We haven’t talked a lot, but social osmosis has sort of made us culpable in the same milieu of interlocked parties.” Aradia pondered, then shot a smile back at John.

“So, I consider you a friend. That would definitely make our lives a bit easier if we were friends, wouldn’t it?” she was rhetorical, definitely, but the question still hovered in an unresolved stasis.

“I guess so. I do like making friends if we’re being completely straightforward here.” he rambled. John sat down on the grass, feeling a bit more relaxed and open to let out his flow of consciousness in such a friendly company. Still, he gulped. Saying the next words should have been practiced already, but they grew out with a large sigh, nevertheless.

“I’m not dead, am I?” he asked.

Aradia frowned. “No, unfortunately, that’s yet to come but don’t despair. You’re still more useful alive than you would be dead.”

He ignored the ominous foreshadowing of the word ‘yet’ and instead decided to focus on one existential question at a time. “Then where am I, really? I know this isn’t my real home,” he said, almost proud to have managed that conclusion by himself. “The skyrise isn’t apparent, and I’m pretty sure we’re definitely in some kind of past.”

“I’d be interested in your guess,” she said, crossing her legs to sit across from him.

“Uhm, my main guess is sort of dorky. Like, maybe this is some kind of Holodeck?” he surmised, every word gapped with a questioning pause. “Or, like, you’ve, maybe, plugged into my brain and we’re reliving my memories?”

Aradia gave a wide-eyed stare, seemingly surprised.

“I’m actually surprised by how close that is,” she grinned. “I guess I underestimate how intuitive your culture is in extra-spacial metaphysics. In a sense, yes, you’re on the right track. This is definitely a space of memories, but I didn’t have anything to do with its presence. I just learned where to look.”

“Oh,” John nodded, trying to politely show that he understood. “Uh, I’m sorry if this comes off as rude, because I’m all for sticking around, but why did you bring me here?”

Aradia didn’t seem concerned with the question. “Oh, I’m trying to loosen up some knots. It’s kind of crucial we move along before time loses its factor in this world.”

John looked puzzled again. “And I come into this… how, exactly?”

“Well, I’m sure you’ve gleaned that this session converges around you quite a lot. Not to be too intrusive, but you haven’t come all this way just for a jog in childhood fantasies. Hah, well, maybe not yours exactly. But I’d love if you’d show me around for some time if you don’t mind.” she said, giving him a slight reprieve.

John gave a half-hearted smile. He didn’t seem entirely too reticent, and his degree of wounds suffered had all but been staunched in the brief time he’d resided in this plane of existence, even the hangover. His body felt almost ethereal, and while his senses were still there, they felt like covered in plastic, or something. In all forms and functions, he seemed a lot looser now than he would have been prior. Maybe it was being back home or perhaps his body had learned to loosen against all the barrages and falling from alien abilities.

“I’d like that. Sure, I’ll show you around,” he said, pulling himself back up. Maybe the answer came out a bit quick and desperate, but Aradia didn’t seem to mind.

So, they walked a few blocks in silence. John recounted his memories, as few and far between as they were, of the land he could never get enough of, even if moments of boredom had been common when he was younger. Like the back of his hand, while the places they went weren’t unique, they all had a sense of complacency in their structure. The houses and streets and blocks were as much a systematized structure as they were a part of nature, a part of how he later surmised his life was supposed to move on – structured – like his dad always wanted. He said as much, in fewer words but with the same sort of yearning he expected was the root of all of his misgivings growing into adulthood. It was ironic how a place so structured and managed like this would leave him so unprepared for what was, apparently, his lot in life from the very beginning.

They made their way back to his house, the front yard this time. The door stood closed, the driveway – empty. Before reaching the end of the block, where the concrete slabs moved toward the Egbert residence, they saw a tiny, unperceptively unique creature in a sweatshirt appear out of nowhere, next to the mailbox.

“Who is that?” John scrunched his forehead. He had a vague recollection of a mailman being a common character in this neighborhood, but he never thought to have seen one come to their house directly under his supervision.

“I haven’t gotten to that part yet, but I think they’re sort of important in the long-run,” Aradia said.

“Wait,” John looked, puzzled but with an increasing sense of remembrance.

The apparent mailman, or – mailperson - in the sweatshirt looked nervous but they didn’t seem to be able to perceive the wandering duo, in fact, looking straight through them with their nervous glances protruding through the neighborhood. Confused, the figure gleaned about the mailbox, opening it – intruding like a curious cat. They pulled out a couple of letters and a large box in red.

“Yeah, wait, yeah - I knew this was ‘that’ day! That’s Dave’s present, it never came!” John huffed, with an increasing sense of emergency. “We have to stop them!”

Aradia pulled a hand in front of John, holding his stiff posture from moving forward. They stopped, and the memory continued.

“Let’s just watch, for now, we don’t have much influence here, and the process would only be exasperated if we intervened,” she said, calmly.

His mail in hand, the invasive creature perused their findings. Meanwhile, a car came from a slow turn from behind them.

Aradia kept her eyes on the mailperson, pulling an odd diagonal face, clearly deep in thought at their actions.

But when John’s head turned to perceive the oncoming vehicle, his eyes went entirely glazed. When the tears began swelling through his sockets, only then he realized that he was looking at his father. The same sight as always, not a second of age showing on the man from here to his deathbed, John couldn’t help but wave, cry out, and, if it wasn’t for Aradia holding him, he would most certainly have jumped straight on the drive-way, intercepting the vehicle.

“Please,” he cried out, “I need to see him.”

Aradia, with not a sense of empathy, pulled John closer to her, keeping a watchful eye on the encounter. “You will, in a few minutes your guardian will enter the house and greet you with a freshly-cooked cake. He has you, the past you, to look out after.”

In a stalwart tone, she gave him a smile with even more reassurance. “This is your memory of him, you still have that in you. But now, you can appreciate that memory closer. How about that?”

John’s tears trickled dark spots on the concrete. He gulped away the mucus in his throat and relied on the support Aradia was presently allowing him.

Once the car was parked, his father stood out and encountered the being. In a delirious manner of someone who was caught in the act, they held the boon of John’s mail behind their back, completely foolishly trying to hide away their misdeeds.

Then came a stout look of fatherly disappointment, one John couldn’t help but stiffen from. The exchange had palpable energy to it, even Aradia seemed to consider the man with some sense of security.

The fatherly exchange lasted no more than a few moments. Dad Egbert continued on his trajectory for the house, leaving the sweat shirted mailperson behind. Their head lowered in shame; what was once an imperceptible, curious being became completely erased from existence from that blink-and-you-miss-it “I’m not mad, I’m just disappointed” aura. The fellow stood solemnly, regretfully: abandoned and ashamed. John couldn’t bear not to feel empathetic for such an emphatic display of character building.

“It’s no one’s fault that you ended up where you are. There was an influence on you, but it didn’t mean life couldn’t turn a different direction.” Aradia consoled, seeing the breathlessness John was struggling to hide. “I hope you know that your memories are all you, and whatever happens next isn’t going to change who you are.”

“What? What am I supposed to do next?” he asked, completely exasperated having seen the exchange before him.

“I don’t know. How about you go take a look at your present?” she said, smiling and patting his back to push John to move further. “It’s your birthday, after all.”

John did as he was told. Maybe it was the influence of his dad’s parenting, but he accepted the suggestion as a fact that needed doing. Moving through the motions, reaching out to the unfamiliar figure, his legs shook at each step. Aradia looked from the curb like a proud parent teaching their child to ride a bike, smiling at the sight.

Once his feet reached the downcast gaze of the would-be thief, they looked up, gave a start, a frightened grimace and vanished, zapped away, embarrassed. The mail remained there, now, fallen on the grass. John looked even more petrified, but his hands instinctively reached out for the jumble left in place. Aradia flew to his side, looking much more ecstatic than the man receiving his present.

She moved the two of them back to the swing set. John lowered himself on the seat, his lap holding the retrieved items, and ripped through the box to find the beautiful present from Dave. His tears hadn’t stopped flowing, his eyes now red but after all of this, a happy memory was finally reconstituted. A memory he was forced to live without until now. Maybe this was the experience he needed all along, he thought. Underneath the beautifully rendered, pristinely yet excessively mal-treated bunny was a set of game discs. They read SBURB on the front.

The world around him narrowed, again, in vertigo. His memories shifted as if the game itself imparted some kind of supernatural influence on his thoughts. The bright flash appeared again – the crack - and the environment around him changed slightly. The box in his lap disappeared, the wind flowed through his face, the swings pulling him an inch further, and then back. The grass of the lawn shifted in a blink, but nothing else seemed amiss. If John hadn’t experienced that something was intruding in his memory, it would have not even occurred that this was an entirely new phenomenon, a different past.

“Wait, hold on, I’ll get us to the good parts,” Aradia said, patting John on the shoulder reassuringly and flying up in the air. John followed the sight, his tears now receded under the surprise of the strange shift and looking at Aradia confused about what her next actions would be.

The fairy girl in red turned her hands around in a weird circular motion. From them, a cog-like phantasmal projection extended out in front of her. It stayed in the air, slowly turning its teeth clockwise. Aradia extended her hand out and with a swift motion, swiped to the right.

The cog immediately spun faster, increasing its speed exponentially, the light going darker and darker around them, and then, with its spin having found an equilibrium of acceleration, lighter again. The sky grew bright, it swelled in red, complimenting Aradia’s visage until John, finally out of the strange trance, saw that, indeed, the sky had turned completely blood red. With seconds, he saw a flaming ball of fire increasing in volume towards him, his house changing, mutating into a weird blockish mess in seconds.

Then came the heat, a scorching menace that gladly couldn’t fully pierce John’s ethereal form. The meteor was coming straight down at him, and his sight turned white for the third time.

“Jesus fucking fuck!!!” John screamed.


End file.
